A lead connected to the same network but different players.
It was the same rot though.
Their informant had provided coordinates for a covert exchange involving classified military intel.
It was supposed to expose the final financier of the trafficking ring. Instead, the informant betrayed them.
Again. As expected.
This time, the consequences were immediate.
Lu Chengran was ambushed before reaching the rendezvous point.
His escorts killed while he was restrained and transported under heavy guard, kept weak but alive.
That detail told him everything.
Someone wanted him delivered personally and not executed in the field.
This narrowed the list of enemies considerably.
It may be his father's political rivals or military opportunists. Men who viewed his death as advancement.
Yet, the convoy never reached its destination.
Halfway through transport, chaos erupted and all hell broke loose.
At first, Lu Chengran thought it was a riot brought about by conflict of interest between his captives and another opposing group.
But then came the screams. Guards suddenly turned on each other.
They attacked indiscriminately like rabid dogs tearing each other's flesh.
Lu Chengran saw the world that fractured in minutes. He knew then that chaos would follow.
Lu Chengran took advantage of this and escaped in the confusion.
He took down two armed escorts and stole a vehicle. He drove toward the nearest secure location in his memory, this warehouse.
The same one built on a whim because of a suspicious woman's inexplicable warning.
He arrived with infected close behind.
Lu Chengran fought them at the perimeter. However, he sustained a bite during the melee. Originally, he wouldn't have made such a mistake. But captivity had weakened his perception slightly.
He had known immediately, then. There was no denying the sensation.
A burning intrusion beneath the skin.
Lu Chengran was certain of the contamination. So, he sealed himself inside and prepared for death.
What followed, however, defied every framework of logic he possessed.
At first, the transformation was agony.
His thoughts splintered and his body ceased to obey him.
Then came the hunger. It was not physical.
It was something more primal, violent.
An instinct to consume, to tear, to seek.
He lost track of time just as he lost track of himself.
Yet somewhere, buried beneath the corruption, a fragment of awareness endured.
A dim ember.
But he could not move it just as he could not control his body.
Yet it remained. And then she arrived.
Lu Chengran remembered the door slamming open.
He remembered the scent of fresh blood drifting in his nose.
The pulse of life.
His body reacted and attacked.
And then—
Pain.
A sharp, unexpected bite at his neck.
It should have been absurd.
If not for the unbearable fire that followed.
He felt the infection recoiling, something invading what had already invaded him.
A second force.
It was wild, unrefined, and overwhelming.
It ripped through the corruption like acid through fabric.
His consciousness surged.
Pain became clarity and the hunger vanished.
Through the haze, he heard her clear voice.
She was loudly protesting the circumstances and expressing an almost despairing disgust and disbelief at what she had done.
It was, objectively, one of the strangest experiences of Lu Chengran's life.
And yet, when he opened his eyes and saw her familiar face staring at him in horror, blood on her lips and outrage in her gaze, he had nearly laughed.
Because somehow, impossibly, she had done it again.
She saved him again.
Lu Chengran studied her now as she absentmindedly scratched the cat perched in her lap.
There was much about this woman that did not fit.
A woman alone in an apocalypse, possessing knowledge she should not have.
She reacted to impossible events with alarming adaptability and displayed medical competence and strategic awareness far beyond what she outwardly suggested.
And then there was the bite.
He touched the faint mark on his neck.
It still throbbed slightly.
It was the evidence of what should have been fatal.
Instead, it had reversed the infection entirely.
That fact alone would alter everything.
It would put her in the center of all of this.
And yet Lu Chengran felt no immediate urge to interrogate her.
Not now.
Not when exhaustion lined her posture despite her attempts to mask it.
Not when her first concern after surviving had been whether zombie saliva was contagious through retaliation.
They both needed that illusion of sweet relief.
Lu Chengran thought she was a ridiculous woman.
An amusing woman yet intriguing woman.
There was a certain danger hidden underneath that seemingly silly and harmless exterior.
Lu Chengran stepped closer towards her.
She looked up at him.
Their gazes met.
"Lu Chengran," he said simply.
She blinked in question.
"That's your full introduction?"
"Yes."
She narrowed her eyes, a trace of doubt was present there.
"That sounds suspiciously incomplete."
"I think it is fairly sufficient."
She seemed unconvinced but let it pass.
"Li Yue."
He repeated the name internally.
She did not elaborate, mimicking him.
Not to boast but most people, upon learning his name, sought more. It wasn't exactly kept a secret.
This identity that was of renown was used to hide his other sensitive ones in plain sight.
Either recognition, validation, or advantage. Those people would ask him of that. Like he owed it to them.
Li Yue merely accepted it.
Then immediately asked where he found the audacity to become a zombie in his own warehouse.
Lu Chengran almost smiled.
As she spoke, something settled within him.
It was a somewhat calculated decision.
He owed her a life debt. Two, in fact.
That alone warranted his full protection.
But beyond obligation, there was practicality.
Li Yue was no ordinary civilian. Lu Chengran was sure of it.
Whatever anomaly surrounded her more or less painted her a target.
And in this new world, unguarded assets rarely survived long.
He would take responsibility for her safety.
Ensure no threat reached her before it reached him.
Not merely because she was his benefactor even though that also mattered.
But because allowing someone like Li Yue to navigate the collapse alone would be both wasteful and dangerous.
She was either a rare ally or a storm disguised as a person.
Possibly even both.
Either way, she would remain under his watch.
Lu Chengran listened as she complained about the emotional trauma of being pursued by small undead mammals.
And for the first time in days, perhaps weeks, Lu Chengran felt something dangerously close to peace.
Outside, the apocalypse raged and civilization fractured.
But within the steel walls of the warehouse, amidst supplies and silence, a strange certainty took root.
The future had shifted.
And at its center stood a woman who bit zombies to assert dominance despite being utterly disgusted.