Chapter 517: Played To His Desires

"It was not human flesh," Chief Gao said quickly. "I never fed human meat to the village."

"Then what was it?" Ouyang Jin asked.

"Mutated animals."

"Where did you get them?"

"The soldiers brought them."

"Commander Qiu’s soldiers?" Leng Pan asked.

Chief Gao nodded.

"They came every few weeks. They delivered supplies and collected information from the Mother."

"What information?"

"Changes in the villagers. Ability development. Control levels. How long the seeds could remain dormant."

The villagers began shouting.

"You knew?"

"You said the water was safe!"

"My son died after drinking it!"

Chief Gao stepped backwards, but the mist barrier stopped him.

"I didn’t know everything!"

"You knew enough," Old Chen said.

Chief Gao turned towards him.

"I was trying to keep everyone alive."

"You keep saying that as if it could erase what you did."

"We would have starved without their supplies."

"The well was clean before the Mother arrived," Old Chen said. "We had stored grain. We could have survived."

"Not for long."

"We could have tried."

Old Chen’s voice shook with anger.

"But you never gave us a choice. You accepted the aliens’ offer because they promised to make you stronger."

Chief Gao became silent.

Leng Pan watched him carefully.

"That is true, isn’t it?"

Chief Gao looked away.

"What did they promise you?" she asked.

"No one would listen to me before the apocalypse."

"That was not my question."

Chief Gao clenched his hands.

"They said I would become an ability user."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Then they lied."

"They said the process needed time."

"Over a year was not enough?"

Chief Gao’s face reddened.

The aliens had played on his desire for power and importance.

They had convinced him that betraying strangers and controlling his own villagers would eventually make him stronger than everyone else.

By the time he realized the promise might be false, he had already committed too many crimes to turn back.

"How many travellers did you send into that house?" Ouyang Jin asked.

Chief Gao did not answer.

"How many?" Old Chen shouted.

"I did not count."

Silence fell.

That answer was worse than any number.

The people he had sacrificed were so unimportant to him that he had not even bothered to count them.

Mei Lin began crying.

"My brother was one of them."

Chief Gao looked at her.

"He tried to expose the village."

"He tried to stop you!"

"He would have brought the soldiers here."

"The soldiers were already working with you."

Mei Lin rushed towards the barrier.

Silk caught her before she could reach it.

"Let me go!"

"Not yet," Silk said. "You should not stain your hands because of him."

"He killed my brother."

"And he will answer for it."

Mei Lin struggled for a moment before her strength left her.

Silk held her while she cried.

Chief Gao lowered his head.

He finally seemed to understand that there would be no forgiveness.

Leng Pan looked at the villagers.

"We are not the people who should decide his punishment. This is your village, and you are the ones he harmed."

Old Chen studied her.

"Will you hand him over to us?"

"After he gives us all the information he has."

"What if he refuses?"

Lu Zhen looked at Chief Gao.

"He won’t."

Chief Gao shivered.

Old Chen turned towards the villagers.

"We should lock him inside the same guest house where he sent his victims."

Several people agreed immediately.

Others wanted him tied beside the well.

A few demanded his execution.

The argument became louder.

Ouyang Jin stepped forward.

"You don’t have to decide tonight. You are injured and angry. If you act now, some of you might regret it later."

"Would you regret killing him?" one man asked.

"No," Ouyang Jin replied honestly. "But this is not my decision."

His blunt answer quietened some of the villagers.

Old Chen thought for a while.

"We will imprison him until everyone has recovered enough to hold a proper judgment."

No one objected.

Leng Pan moved the mist barrier towards the empty house they had used.

Silk added several layers of thread around Chief Gao’s arms and legs.

Two villagers volunteered to guard him, although Leng Pan warned them not to enter the house alone.

There could still be parasites inside his body.

Once Chief Gao was secured, he directed them towards a hidden compartment beneath his bedroom floor.

Lu Hao and Blaze entered his house and removed a heavy black box.

It had no lock or visible opening.

The eye-shaped alien symbol was engraved on top.

They carried it into the courtyard.

One of the alien prisoners reacted immediately.

He struggled against Silk’s threads and shouted something in an unfamiliar language.

"He seems worried," Lu Tao said.

"That means the box is important," Leng Pan replied.

The scarred captive’s implant might be able to open it.

She took the chip out of the sealed container and held it near the box.

A blue line travelled across the surface.

The lid separated in the middle.

Cold air escaped.

Inside were several alien devices, blood samples, paper records written by Chief Gao, and a small holographic projector.

Ouyang Jin activated the projector.

A map appeared above the box.

Red points marked more than twenty locations across the country.

The village was only one of them.

Tayi City was the largest.

A list of human names appeared beside each location.

Most were identified by numbers, military ranks, or experiment roles.

One name was repeated throughout the records.

Commander Qiu.

Lu Zhen’s gaze hardened.

"He was not merely aware of the experiments."

"He helped organize them," Leng Pan said.

The scarred man they had treated inside the space had been right.

The collaboration went far deeper than they thought.

Another file opened automatically.

It displayed a video recorded from inside Tayi City.

Rows of zombies stood in a vast underground facility.

Human prisoners were suspended in glass chambers above them.

At the far end, a large machine pulsed with the same blue energy as the purification crystal.

A date appeared beneath the recording.

It had been taken two days earlier.

Then a warning flashed across the image.

[Final integration begins in seventy-two hours.]

[Human control subjects will be merged with the undead command network.]

Lu Tao stared at the message.

"What does that mean?"

Leng Pan thought about the parasite queen and its ability to control villagers without completely destroying their intelligence.

"They are going to connect human minds to the zombie army."

"To control it?" Lu Hao asked.

"Most likely."

Sonny looked towards the road leading away from the village.

"If they succeed, the zombies will not fight using instinct anymore."

"They could use human strategies," Ouyang Jin said.

The situation was becoming worse.

Before anyone could continue, Leng Pan sensed movement inside her space.

The scarred man had awakened again.

This time, his condition was much better.

He was trying to sit up while calling for someone.

Leng Pan turned to Lu Zhen.

"We need to speak to the survivor."

"Is he awake?"

"Yes."

They returned to the curtained section of the empty house and entered the space.

The scarred man looked relieved when he saw them.

"My name is Zhao Kun," he said before they could ask. "I used to drive supply convoys out of Tayi City."

Leng Pan sat beside him.

"Then you know what is happening there?"

"I know some of it."

"Tell us everything."

Zhao Kun swallowed.

"I escaped from Tayi City four months ago. At that time, the aliens had already started gathering zombies."

"How many?"

"At first, thousands."

"And now?"

Zhao Kun looked at them.

"If the facility is still operating, there could be more than a million."

Lu Zhen’s expression changed.

Zhao Kun continued before they could ask another question.

"The zombies are not the worst thing beneath that city."

"What else is there?" Leng Pan asked.

"A gate."

"What kind of gate?"

"I don’t know."

Zhao Kun’s face became pale.

"But whatever is on the other side has been trying to come through."