PSW - Chapter 165

Chapter 165

A high-pitched shriek erupted from the zombie's mouth, its sound waves spreading far and wide, stirring the distant hordes into a frenzy. They charged blindly and fearlessly toward Zhongshan.

This guy seems to have multiple abilities, too, huh?

Xia Sheng suddenly swung his sword, and a massive flame lunged forward, violently striking one of the water tornadoes and erupting in an unimaginable wave of heat.

He seized the moment the heatwave erupted to break through the blockade. After a focused glance at the still-dancing Xia siblings below, he abruptly withdrew, distancing himself from the area.

The three towering water tornadoes dissipated, and the water dragon swooped down from the clouds in pursuit of Xia Sheng.

Zheng Yi didn't use her ability to restrict his escape. If part of Xia Sheng's motivation was to prevent the battle from harming the siblings who had performed for him for so long, then Zheng Yi's was to keep Yu Yinan out of harm's way. She sat atop the water dragon's head, her face devoid of emotion, watching from on high as Xia Sheng used his ability to flee. She controlled the dragon, keeping it at a carefully measured distance from him.

"No need to follow."

Zheng Yi's voice echoed directly in Yu Yinan's mind, and Yu Yinan realized with a start that Zheng Yi's mental power had reached such a level.

"Really, how did someone like you just show up..." Xia Sheng's expression was complicated. In the fragmented, inexplicable memories that came to him, an expert of Zheng Yi's caliber shouldn't have existed at this point in the apocalypse. In those memories, human shelters were destroyed one by one by zombie hordes and mutated beasts, and at least half of the survivors... were either assimilated by zombies or gradually became slaves and pets to intelligent zombies like him. They had built bases, of course, but under constant zombie sieges, resource scarcity, and frequent disasters, the way things developed in his memories, they probably wouldn't have lasted more than a few years. Yet in the end, before even those few years were up, a sudden, abrupt destruction had occurred.

If he possessed the strength he had in his memories, he might have stood a chance against this woman, but now...

Heh. Perhaps, for humanity as a whole, this was a good thing.

He came to an abrupt halt, twisting his body in a seemingly awkward and humanly impossible motion as he brought the bone sword down in a vicious slash. His mental power erupted in that instant, condensing into a monstrous flame that he unleashed with the strike.

The scorching flame erupted, rushing straight for the water dragon's head and closing in on Zheng Yi's face. Yet atop the dragon, Zheng Yi remained perfectly still, only strands of her hair stirring gently in the wind. The explosive slash split in two before her, detonating on either side without so much as touching her.

"You! At least look at me and fight back!" Xia Sheng roared, his entire body shooting into the air. Flames engulfed him, burning his concealing black cloak to ash. He charged directly in front of the water dragon, slashing repeatedly with his bone sword. With each strike, countless bone fragments burst outward, flying toward Zheng Yi in a deadly assault.

Walls of ice rose one after another, catching the countless bone fragments. The shards embedded themselves deeply within the ice, then fell to the ground as the walls melted away. Zheng Yi finally stood up from the dragon's head. Before Xia Sheng could rush forward again in crazed delight, she simply lifted a hand. An immense water tornado erupted from beneath his feet, sweeping him up and flinging him violently into the sky. Zheng Yi didn't use her terrifying mental power; instead, with a flick of her wrist, she formed high-pressure water blades. The moment the water dragon vanished, she began to step through the air, a splash of water blooming under her foot with each step to support her.

The moment the water tornado disappeared, Xia Sheng's figure reappeared. He struggled to adjust his posture in mid-air, raising his bone blade horizontally to block the instant Zheng Yi closed in.

There wasn't even a harsh sound of collision. With a mere flash of watery light, the bone blade he took such pride in was severed. The broken half was enveloped by a current of water as it fell, crushed to dust in an instant. Though Xia Sheng had anticipated this, he hadn't imagined the gap in their power would be so despairingly vast. He thrust out the remaining half of the blade with a reverse grip and forced another handful of meteor dust into his mouth. His mental power flared painfully, erupting into a flower of flame that detonated directly in front of Zheng Yi.

Extreme heat and terrifying compression-countless flames condensed into a single mass. Just as it was about to erupt into a massive explosion, an invisible film of water enveloped its edge. A powerful mental force severed his connection to the flame, isolating him from it. Then, taking over his will without the slightest lag, it seized control of the fire and sent the explosion he had painstakingly created high into the sky.

"Boom!"

The shockwave rolled out, seeming to blast even the clouds in the sky apart. But before the aftershock could even spread downward, a sudden downpour suppressed it all.

Xia Sheng's mind went blank. Despite all the lines and scenes from his memories, none of them fit this situation. He stood rigidly in place, his gaze suddenly piercing through the curtain of rain to the woman poised effortlessly in mid-air. The drizzling rain fell in fine threads, yet all of it curved around her, not daring to disturb her in the slightest.

"Mr. Xia Sheng, do you have any other tricks up your sleeve? Feel free to use them all."

...What other tricks were there? The flame bomb he had just created could have easily destroyed the entire Zhongshan base, annihilating over ninety percent of the people inside. Less than ten percent of the ability users would have survived, and only by sheer luck. He gave a bitter laugh. "Are you from the future? No... that's not right." No, in the future he knew, this person simply didn't exist. There was no such being.

If he were given time, in a year he should have been able to awaken the ability to control lightning. If he had continuously collected meteor fragments and persisted in consuming the dust, his advancement would have been even faster. According to his memories, he would have gained many, many more abilities in the future. He would be able to control lightning, hypnotize ordinary ability users, command endless zombie hordes, enchant his bone blade to make it indestructible, and...

"You're not from this world, are you?" Xia Sheng stopped reminiscing and spoke with a bitter smile. As if his spine had been removed, he sank wearily to the ground. "I thought I was the key to everything. Those memories... I thought heaven wanted me to create a zombie empire... to lead humanity and all living things toward true evolution, toward a new world, and to avoid that abrupt, destructive end."

"Is that so? What's your name?" Zheng Yi didn't strike immediately. Instead, she floated down before him and asked softly.

"...I don't have any memories of that," Xia Sheng said with a self-deprecating glance at her. "Just like how I have no memories of you. Heh, maybe it's all a dream. I've become a zombie, after all. It's only logical that I'm not mentally sound."

"Do you remember Wan Yinyue and Xie Congdong?" Zheng Yi asked, referring to the original novel's protagonists.

"In those memories, the base they founded was still struggling to hold on, but it was meaningless. The world was destroyed in the end anyway." Xia Sheng bared his sharp teeth, looking Zheng Yi up and down before averting his gaze. "You win. Kill me. You might as well kill the Xia siblings to keep me company. They're going to turn into zombies anyway. In your eyes, even a zombie that was once an ability user is no longer one of your kind, right? I didn't want to kill them at first, but now that I think about it... I can't imagine an afterlife without Light Pretty Cure and the Poli Guli Robot. Ah, why haven't I run into any other magical girl-type transformation users?" He rambled on, becoming exceptionally long-winded.

"Where are the other meteor fragments? Including those outside Ling Country." Zheng Yi, unmoved by his rambling, asked calmly.

"How would I know? If I did, I wouldn't still have only one fragment after all this time!"

Zheng Yi nodded and asked her final question. "In your opinion, do you still consider yourself human?"

Xia Sheng, who had been rambling about various anime from before the apocalypse, suddenly fell silent. His pupils, devoid of whites, fixed on Zheng Yi, meeting her calm, rippleless black eyes before looking away. "I can't remember how many people I've killed... how many I've eaten." No matter how human-like an intelligent zombie became, there was always a process.

"I don't belong to 【humanity】, because the endpoint of human evolution is zombification! Only by becoming a zombie can one be fearless in the face of disaster, free from the constraints of resources and survival, and achieve true immortality!" He suddenly erupted, an expression of extreme fanaticism on his face as he burst out laughing. "Haha, hahaha, hahaha!"

"Then, thank you for your answers." Zheng Yi nodded, her face still showing little emotion. Xia Sheng's laughter died down. He frowned slightly, and in that moment, he suddenly realized something was wrong with Zheng Yi. Or perhaps, in that instant, Zheng Yi had completely dropped her facade. His eyes widened as he tried to say something, but his body was no longer under his control. He struggled to open his mouth, only to find his vision tumbling toward the sky. As the world turned upside down, he felt himself roll twice on the ground, and then he saw his own standing body.

Gently, with no earth-shattering sound or violent motion, his headless body simply fell. Xia Sheng looked at himself and thought he heard distant footsteps, and a distant voice calling, "Zheng Yi?"

"All taken care of, Jiejie~ Could you help me burn this?" In that instant, it was as if she had put her mask back on, or perhaps she was revealing a rare sliver of humanity. In any case, her tone and expression suddenly became much more vivid.

He was devoured by the flames, returning to darkness.

---

"So... he's really dead?" Xia Cheng still found it hard to believe. She couldn't help but confirm it again and again, only relaxing after receiving an affirmative answer. After a moment of silence, she glanced at Xia Sheng and spoke in a low voice. "But my brother and I... we'll probably turn into zombies soon. I don't know if we'll keep our consciousness..." She feared retaining a sliver of awareness only to be driven by a zombie's instincts.

[I can't do anything about that. There's no direct zombie cure in the store. But you can have them go to Humanity's Light in Pujie. Isn't the Director from the Dawn Research Institute going there too? With more people around, if these two siblings contribute some blood, maybe a cure can be developed.] Before Zheng Yi could even open the store or ask, Zero One spoke up, pointing out a clear path. [Or... or you could heal them more right now, purify them a little. Maybe that could delay the zombification process.]

As for whether a cure could be developed, or if it could be developed while they still retained full consciousness... Zero One had no idea.

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