Chapter 33: The Lightning-Type Zombie

Perhaps sensing danger, the zombie reluctantly abandoned its meal. The inability to feed in peace made it irritable, and it whipped arcs of electricity toward Lin Qingqing with frantic intensity.

Lightning-type abilities are not like others; they possess not only great destructive power but also a potent paralyzing effect. Lin Qingqing dared not take a single hit. To be safe, she chose to block everything with ice armor. Her armor was condensed from pure energy; even if it melted, it would only be pure water, which does not conduct electricity.

As Lin Qingqing’s ice armor shattered one piece after another, she left the zombie’s body covered in wounds. Having weathered the zombie’s initial burst of skills, and seeing that the intervals between its attacks were growing longer, Lin Qingqing began to prepare her counterattack.

Another arc of electricity struck, and Lin Qingqing hurriedly condensed an ice shield to block it. This time, the power of the arc was much weaker than at the start. Seizing the gap in the zombie’s ability usage, Lin Qingqing quickly formed two ice blades and fired them simultaneously at the zombie’s eyes.

With a soft "clang," one was swatted away by the zombie, but the other successfully pierced its left eye. Wounded in a vital spot, the zombie let out a miserable wail and charged at Lin Qingqing regardless of the consequences.

Ducking to avoid a sharp claw, Lin Qingqing conjured two more ice blades, this time aiming for the zombie's gaping, foul-smelling mouth. One blade successfully entered its throat, while the other was blocked by the zombie’s teeth and shattered with a "snap."

Having suffered heavy blows twice in succession, the zombie began to flail and scratch wildly at its surroundings. Lin Qingqing remained calm; seizing the opportunity, she rolled across the ground, crouched, and slashed at its knees. The strike was precise and fierce. The zombie stumbled, its already unstable lower limbs losing balance, and it collapsed to the ground.

Seeing this, Lin Qingqing felt a surge of joy. She rushed forward, stepped on its wrist, and held her ice blade with an underhand grip, driving it through the zombie’s right eye and into its brain. She twisted the blade, pulverizing the organ.

After killing the zombie, Lin Qingqing used the ice blade to pry open its skull through its still-open mouth, and sure enough, she found a purple lightning-type crystal core. Only then did she turn to the corpse of Chu Wei and strip him of his valuables. She searched the area several times, but aside from the girl with the ponytail hiding behind a tree, there was no one else in sight. Xiao Hu had likely slipped away long ago; Lin Qingqing hadn’t seen a trace of her since the zombie started hunting Chu Wei.

"She’s a clever one," Lin Qingqing thought. She didn't dwell on it and approached the girl she had saved, asking, "What is your name? Where are you from? How old are you?"

The girl seemed afraid of her; she stammered for a long time before she could speak clearly. "My... my name is Lei Min. I’m 22, and my home is in H Province." After speaking, she looked up at Lin Qingqing, hesitated, and added, "I am a lightning-type ability user. Before the apocalypse, I was a graduate student at Rongcheng University."

Lightning-type? Why another one? Lin Qingqing subconsciously glanced at the zombie’s corpse. Could these people have known about the level-two lightning zombie and come here specifically to hunt it?

She quickly reviewed the behavior of the six young men she had encountered earlier, but she became uncertain. Their clothes were tidy, and they didn't even have weapons in their hands; it looked as if they hadn't fought the zombie at all.

"Were those people with you? What were you doing in the park?" Lin Qingqing asked.

"The five people from before were my classmates. We’ve been together since the end of the world. I brought them here today because... because my cousin worked at this park as an administrator, and I wanted to find her." Her voice trailed off toward the end.

Oh, so they were looking for someone. That explained it.

"Did you find her?"

"I... did." She lowered her head, buried her face in her knees, and continued with a trembling voice, "The zombie you just killed... that was her."

"Hmm?"

Lin Qingqing was genuinely shocked. She had assumed it was a coincidence; she never imagined there was a blood relation. However, for a lightning-type girl to have a cousin who was also a lightning-type zombie—could there be a connection? Both sisters were lightning-type. She remembered that Zhou Mang and his cousin were both fire-type. Could it be that ability attributes aren't random, but related to genetics?

"The idea that the ability chain in the mind resembles DNA might not be so far-fetched after all," Lin Qingqing mused, her thoughts wandering. She then thought of something else and returned to the zombie to examine it closely.

The zombie was wearing the dark blue uniform of a park administrator, though it was now tattered from her blade. Lin Qingqing lifted the fabric with her knife to inspect it. Aside from the wounds she had inflicted, she found two black, circular holes on its abdomen. Around the holes was a large patch of irregular, black-red substance, which stood out starkly against the zombie’s blue-purple skin.

These holes... they looked like bullet wounds. If that black-red substance was blood, then these wounds were likely inflicted a long time ago, and they might even have been fatal.

"Is it possible that after the apocalypse began, she didn't turn into a zombie immediately, but instead awakened her lightning ability just like her cousin? And even though she was later killed by gunfire, she retained her ability after becoming a zombie, which is why she became a lightning-type zombie?"

Unfortunately, she had only seen this one case, which wasn't enough to prove that all ability users become zombies of the same attribute upon death. But what if it were true? Would people start hunting down ability users just to obtain crystal cores of specific attributes?

"If someone were to do that, who knows how chaotic this world would become?" Lin Qingqing sighed.

Suppressing this thought, she called Lei Min over and pointed out the bullet holes without mentioning her own theories. Upon hearing Lin Qingqing’s explanation, Lei Min’s emotions collapsed. She had always believed her cousin had turned into a zombie at the start of the apocalypse, but to learn she had been murdered later was far more difficult to accept. Combined with the betrayal by her companions, the double blow proved too much for the previously resilient girl. She crouched on the ground, covered her head, and began to weep bitterly.

Watching the girl cry, Lin Qingqing felt a pang of sympathy. She wasn't good at comforting people, so she tentatively reached out and patted the girl’s head gently. To her surprise, the comforting gesture made the girl pause, and then she clung to Lin Qingqing’s leg and cried even louder.

Lin Qingqing’s hand froze in mid-air. "How does comforting her make it worse?"