Chapter 122: The Terrifying Phone Call (1/3)

Feeling the immense power radiating from the zombie, Su Cheng’s expression darkened, and a chill rose in his heart. Yet his hands did not stop moving. Gripping his blade with both hands, he flashed behind the zombie and brought it down viciously on the back of its neck.

In the darkness of night, the blade gleamed like lightning.

The zombie before them seemed to sense the danger. Blood-red light burned ever more fiercely in its cinnabar-colored eyes, while a beastlike roar rumbled from its throat. It suddenly spun around and swung its arm, attempting to withstand Su Cheng’s strike head-on.

Roar!

A terrifying wave of sound swept in all directions. Bai Niao Saki, her eyes filled with terror, crouched on the ground with her hands clamped over her ears, trembling like a frightened ostrich.

The blade descended, overflowing with killing intent!

Su Cheng silently recited, “Psychic Amplification.” A surge of powerful psychic energy wrapped around the icy blade and tore through the air. Like a knife slicing through tofu, it cleaved through the zombie’s flesh, spraying foul-smelling green pus-blood everywhere.

A black arm, withered like a dead branch, slid from the zombie’s shoulder. Yet the creature felt no pain. Having lost an arm, it became even more ferocious, opening its mouth to reveal four horrifying zombie fangs.

A nauseating stench of blood surrounded the zombie. It lunged forward, transforming into a ghostly black blur. In the blink of an eye, it was before Su Cheng, its sharp fangs snapping toward his neck like daggers.

At that critical moment, Su Cheng shifted slightly and retreated half a step, narrowly dodging the attack. He then lashed out with one powerful kick, striking the zombie squarely.

A burst of tremendous force erupted. The zombie’s body bent like a cooked shrimp before being sent flying backward.

At the instant it flew through the air, a demon-slaying arrow shot toward it like a falling star chasing the moon. It pierced straight through the zombie’s chest and pinned the creature to the wall.

The zombie looked like a punctured ball. Its sinister energy poured from its body, and its withered flesh rapidly dissolved into a pool of black pus.

“Ito, did you… did you kill someone?”

Bai Niao Saki’s little face was deathly pale. She stared in horror at the terrifying corpse, her mind a complete mess.

“It wasn’t a person. It was a zombie.” Su Cheng shook his head and wiped the blood from his blade.

The zombie that had attacked him was most likely the owner of this house. According to the clues they had found, the owner had been missing for more than half a year. For some unknown reason, the corpse had suddenly transformed into a zombie and attacked them.

“What exactly is a zombie? Is it the same as the undead in Resident Evil?” Bai Niao Saki tilted her head, asking with an expression of disbelief.

Like Ito, she had only recently graduated and become a police officer. Usually, she dealt with petty cases and trivial disputes, and she had never encountered such a terrifying monster.

“Of course not. Have you ever watched those zombie films from Hong Kong?”

Bai Niao Saki shook her head blankly. Like an elementary-school student waiting for a teacher to explain a lesson, she gazed at Su Cheng expectantly.

“According to Chinese folk legends, zombies are human corpses that transform into demons under certain conditions. Their origins and patterns of behavior are very different from those of Western undead.”

Su Cheng put away the Shadow of Gale and searched the house while explaining the characteristics of zombies to Bai Niao Saki.

“There are many alleged causes of zombie formation: infection by corpse venom, exposure to the vital energy of the living, feng shui, moonlight, the passing of a black cat, possession by an evil spirit, and so on.”

The Notes from Reading in the Weiwei Thatched Cottage divided corpse transformations into two categories: sudden transformation after a fresh burial, and preservation without decay after a long burial.

The owner of this house most likely belonged to the first category. For some unknown reason, the corpse had transformed into a zombie and begun attacking the living.

Su Cheng had encountered a zombie once before. That fool Junji Mitsuike had deliberately infected himself with corpse venom, ultimately becoming a vampire zombie, neither human nor ghost.

As far as Su Cheng knew, zombies were generally divided into six levels.

The lowest rank was the ordinary White Zombie. After a human corpse underwent transformation, its body would sprout a thick layer of white hair. These zombies moved slowly, feared sunlight intensely, and were relatively easy to deal with.

If a White Zombie gorged itself on fresh blood, it would shed its white hair after several years and grow black hair an inch long. It would then become a Black Zombie. Such zombies still feared sunlight and fire, but they were far more agile than White Zombies and considerably stronger.

If a Black Zombie were nurtured in a place steeped in dark energy and absorbed enough human blood, it could transform into a Leaping Zombie. It moved primarily by jumping and possessed tremendous strength.

Above the Leaping Zombie was the Flying Zombie. According to legend, Flying Zombies were extraordinarily swift. They could leap across rooftops and through trees as though flying, and could directly consume the vital essence of the living.

Su Cheng suspected that even an experienced Silver-ranked veteran player might not be able to defeat a Flying Zombie. If one encountered a monster of that level inside a dungeon, one might not even realize how one had died.

After absorbing spiritual essence for several centuries, a Flying Zombie could evolve into an Arid Demon. In myth and legend, the Arid Demon had already become a true fiend, capable of bringing drought and turning vast stretches of land into barren wastelands. Once an Arid Demon appeared, endless calamity would follow.

The final kind of zombie was the Hou, said to have been formed from the skull of the Great God Pangu and regarded as the ancestor of all zombies.

However, the zombie before Su Cheng was clearly far stronger than an ordinary White Zombie. Its monstrous strength was astonishing, its body was as tough as bronze and iron, and even blades and swords could scarcely injure it. The sinister energy within it was also extraordinarily dense.

“A zombie of this level probably couldn’t have formed naturally. Could someone be cultivating corpses here?”

Su Cheng carefully searched the house, but found no useful clues.

What puzzled him was that both he and Bai Niao Saki had heard a cat meow earlier, yet there was no sign of a cat anywhere near the house.

“Could it be true? Is someone really raising zombies in this village? Shouldn’t we report this to the police first?” Bai Niao Saki shuddered.

Although she was far braver than most ordinary young women, even she was badly frightened by such a supernatural phenomenon. If Su Cheng had not been there, she would probably have burst into tears long ago.

“Aren’t we the police? Besides, haven’t you always wanted to solve a major case? Here’s your chance.” Su Cheng spoke half-jokingly, easing the tense and frightening atmosphere.

At that, Bai Niao Saki’s face immediately fell.

“I wanted to solve a murder case, not a case involving ghosts killing people. If we report something like this, the chief will definitely fire us.”

Bai Niao Saki rubbed her cheeks in frustration, feeling as though she had boarded a pirate ship with Su Cheng.

“It wasn’t a ghost. It was a zombie.” Su Cheng dusted off his hands and said seriously, “If someone really is raising corpses here, then there should be more than one zombie in this village. Let’s continue investigating. We might find something unexpected.”

What kind of unexpected discovery could there be? A whole basketful of zombies?

“Regardless, this case is beyond the ability of two rookie police officers like us to handle. We should return first and report the situation to the chief.”

Bai Niao Saki came up with what seemed like the safest plan, unaware that leaving the village would not be so simple.

Just then, her phone rang.

She initially thought it was the chief calling, but when she looked closely, she saw that the number was unfamiliar.

“Hello? Whom may I ask is calling?”

“I—I want to report a murder. Someone is trying to kill me. Come quickly… They’re all insane! Ah! I can’t hold on! Someone, please come save me…”

A shrill, hoarse female voice came through the phone, causing Bai Niao Saki’s heart to clench involuntarily.

Murder?

Her expression changed, and she hurriedly spoke into the phone.

“Ma’am, please don’t panic. Speak slowly. Who is trying to kill you? What is your address? I’ll come over immediately.”

The voice on the phone paused for a moment. Then a scream, strained to the breaking point, rang out.

“No, don’t kill me! These people are insane! They bit off my hands and feet, twisted my head off, and threw it into the huge stew pot! I’m at Yoshino Diner in Zeliang! Please save me…”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The call was abruptly disconnected.

Bai Niao Saki’s face turned as white as paper. Terror sprouted in her heart like wild grass.

“Calm down.” Seeing the fear in her eyes, Su Cheng comfortingly patted her on the shoulder.

“Was that a prank call?” Bai Niao Saki was still shaken. She was so frightened that she nearly dropped the phone.

From the content of the call, it seemed that a woman had been dismembered at a diner, with her head thrown into a huge stew pot.

But what made it even more horrifying was that the emergency call had apparently been made by the very woman who had been dismembered. How was that possible?

The Zeliang mentioned by the woman was the name of this deserted village. Yoshino Diner was not far from the house; at a normal walking pace, it was only five minutes away.

“I don’t know. But don’t you find it strange? Why would an emergency call come to your phone?”

Normally, emergency calls went to the police station. How could that woman have known Bai Niao Saki’s phone number? It was utterly inexplicable.

“Oh, right.”

Bai Niao Saki came to her senses and dialed the emergency number, but strangely, her phone could not connect.

“My phone can’t make calls? Then how did that call get through just now?” The expression on Bai Niao Saki’s face grew increasingly peculiar. She tried several times, but still could not reach the police station.

After thinking for a moment, she summoned her courage and called back the unfamiliar number.

Beep. Beep. Beep…

After a few seconds, the call actually connected.

This time, however, there was no woman’s scream on the other end. Only a silence so deep that it made the hairs on her body stand on end.

“There’s no sound. Perhaps we should go take a look at Yoshino Diner,” Bai Niao Saki said hesitantly.

Regardless of what had happened, now that she had received an emergency call, she could not simply pretend that nothing had occurred.

“All right.”

Su Cheng guessed that the call was probably a hint leading to the next stage of the plot. After taking a brief rest, he and Bai Niao Saki left the large house.

The night deepened. The countryside resembled a vast, desolate grave, shrouded in absolute silence.

Along the narrow rural path, two figures walked beneath the hazy moonlight toward the late-night diner a hundred meters away.

From the entrance of the diner drifted the rich aroma of meat.