Chapter 241 Corpse Puppet, Confession

At the same moment Shi Yetang screamed those three words at the top of her lungs, Su Ze's right foot had already kicked out.

The sound of the wind was sharp.

That foot, carrying terrifying power, stopped precisely in front of Shi Yetang.

It was less than three centimeters from the tip of her nose.

A powerful gust of wind rushed at her face, blowing all the stray hairs on her forehead back, and even her eyelids stung from the wind pressure.

Shi Yetang's pupils reflected that sole; she froze in place, a difficult gulp escaping her throat.

She didn't exhale.

To be precise, she had forgotten how to breathe.

Three seconds later.

Su Ze withdrew his foot and took a step back.

His expression was somewhat strange.

Not a menacing strangeness, but something like—'That's it?'

Su Ze indeed had a momentary lapse in his mind.

The reason he stacked his Burst on top of his 920 base to reach 1840 was purely out of basic tactical consideration. With an unknown enemy, it was better to overestimate than underestimate.

In case Shi Yetang had some trump card, he would first test with fifty percent power; even if she suddenly powered up, he would have enough margin to crush her back.

But the result...

A punch with less than fifty percent power had beaten her into this half-dead state.

Su Ze looked down at her.

Shi Yetang, slumped on the ground, was trembling all over, blood still trickling from the corner of her mouth.

The fact that she could take this punch without dying on the spot showed that her basic combat power was indeed very strong.

If he hadn't exploited a bug, he really wouldn't have been her match.

In fact, he would have been far inferior to her.

"You can start talking now."

Su Ze's tone was flat.

Shi Yetang propped herself up with her still-movable right hand, barely lifting her upper body. Her "Li Fen" face was starting to fail, her features twitching and distorting slightly.

"What... more is there to say?"

She gave a bitter laugh, her ordinary face filled with bitterness.

"You even know my name."

In these words, there was resignation, resentment, and more than anything, a bone-deep fear.

A name.

In the Monster Camp, a true name was an extremely private thing.

Knowing a true name meant the other party was fully aware of your origins, background, and weaknesses.

At least, that was what Shi Yetang believed.

Su Ze looked at her expressionlessly.

In reality?

Aside from the name "Shi Yetang" and the "Zombie Royalty" label, his understanding of the woman before him was approximately zero.

What abilities did she have? He didn't know.

How many companions did she have? He wasn't sure.

How powerful was the force behind her? He had no idea.

But none of this stopped Su Ze from keeping up the act.

He didn't need to say anything; silence was enough.

Because rather than exposing his own blind spots by actively probing, letting the other person fill in the blanks and spill everything themselves was clearly more efficient.

Su Ze just looked down at her with indifferent eyes, saying nothing.

Waiting for her to speak.

Shi Yetang felt suffocated under that gaze.

Silence was more soul-crushing than any threat.

Her psychological defenses were crumbling by the second.

"...Fine, I'll talk."

Shi Yetang closed her eyes and took a deep breath. A layer of grayish-black mist began to swirl on the surface of her body.

The face of "Li Fen" was like a sand painting washed away by water, peeling off and dissipating bit by bit.

In its place was a completely different face.

Su Ze's gaze narrowed slightly.

The system's judgment was indeed correct.

The woman before him—or rather, this zombie—was indeed "stunningly beautiful."

Her skin was so pale it was almost transparent, with clearly visible blue veins winding beneath it. Instead of making her look terrifying, it added an extremely eerie sense of beauty.

Her features were so exquisite they didn't seem like products of nature, but rather something meticulously carved.

Su Ze had seen plenty of beautiful women.

But this kind of eerie beauty was a first for him.

However, he only paused for a moment before resuming that indifferent expression as if everything was within his expectations.

Shi Yetang noticed his look.

Only a moment of surprise, followed by realization.

As expected.

He had long been fully aware of her true identity and appearance.

At this thought, the last shred of hope in Shi Yetang's heart was completely shattered.

"What do you want to know?" Her voice regained its original clear quality.

Su Ze leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "Start from the beginning."

Shi Yetang's parched throat bobbed as she spoke.

"The last round of the survival game... the Zombie Tide Maze you entered was originally a normal reward map."

Su Ze's eyes flickered.

"It was me and three other companions who secretly paid a certain price to temporarily tamper with the teleportation destination and lure you into that maze. The goal was to delay you and drain your Stamina so you couldn't return to Jinghai University to help."

"I know this," Su Ze said indifferently. "But continue, tell me everything."

"Yes..."

Shi Yetang shook her head. "Those three companions of mine aren't in this area. I came here on my own initiative."

"How did you get here?"

Shi Yetang paused, seemingly organizing her words.

"I first broke away from the zombie faction and became a Wanderer."

"For a Wanderer to cross the endless darkness between areas, the price paid is much smaller than for a member of the Monster Camp. But that's only relative."

She lowered her head, her expression complicated.

"Almost all the corpse puppets I had accumulated over the years were destroyed in that darkness. Out of seventeen, only two survived."

"After arriving at the Building Area, I used the remaining materials to secretly create new corpse puppets to replenish my combat power. That Research Personnel named Sun Lin... was one of them."

Su Ze raised an eyebrow.

The endless dark area can actually be crossed?

He remembered two players from Jinghai University who, out of curiosity, tried to enter the dark zone on the periphery of the area and died instantly.

So all players, including himself, speculated that the darkness was an absolute death zone.

Who would have thought it could be crossed!

"Corpse puppets. Tell me more."

Shi Yetang was slightly stunned upon hearing this.

A hint of confusion flashed through her eyes.

He's even asking about corpse puppets?

With his intelligence-gathering capabilities, he shouldn't be ignorant of this...

The thought had barely surfaced before she dismissed it.

No, he definitely knows.

He's just testing to see if I'm lying.

This thought made Shi Yetang even more afraid to hide anything, and she quickly continued.

"A corpse puppet is essentially a special kind of puppet, created by a member of the Zombie Royalty by infusing their own zombie bloodline into a living human body and transforming them."

"They usually act just as they did before, sometimes not even knowing they are already half a corpse puppet. I only need to activate the bloodline within them, and they will instantly lose their life and become a zombie."

"Creating a corpse puppet requires a large amount of Bloodline Power and special materials; it's very time-consuming and labor-intensive."

"But the advantage is that they share the same origin as me, acting like my clones. After activating the bloodline, I can suppress any outward changes for a short time. I can enter their perspective and control their limbs at any time—that's how I controlled her to go to the building just now. However, I can't control them for very long after activation, at most an hour."

"So, regarding the dark area... I used special items to hide myself while controlling them to carry me, relying on the successive consumption of corpse puppets to cleverly cross it."

"Of course, the prerequisite is that the areas within the darkness are close to each other. Otherwise... it won't last long, and even if it does, it's easy to get lost in the darkness."

Su Ze nodded.

This explained why Sun Lin acted like a high-intelligence normal person one moment and became a snarling idiot after turning into a zombie the next.

And she was actually willing to pay such a high price to deal with him?

"How many corpse puppets do you currently have left?"

Shi Yetang was silent for two seconds.

"Five."

Su Ze stared into her eyes for three seconds.

Shi Yetang's scalp tingled under his gaze, but she braced herself and didn't look away.

She was telling the truth.

"Which five?"

"Sun Lin was one, but she doesn't count since she's dead. Then there's Qin Yue, Zheng Siyuan, Ye Qingqing, Shen Jie, and... Lu Jiaming."