324: Chapter 324 What is this then? A zombie?

The tip of the dagger grew closer and closer to that eye. No matter what kind of beast it was, attacking the eyes was always the most effective method.

The black figure, standing over three meters tall opposite him, lunged forward, and its five curved, horn-like claws had already slashed right above Lin Fan's head.

Just at the moment when the dagger was about to sink into its eye socket, the werewolf's body suddenly stopped.

The torso, over three meters tall, halted abruptly amidst the momentum of its full-speed charge. The muscles in its hind legs were locked in a taut state, neither releasing nor retracting.

Its front paws hovered a few dozen centimeters above Lin Fan's head, the five sharp claws motionless.

The tip of Lin Fan's dagger brushed against the layer of black fur around the eye socket, and he suddenly reined in his strength.

He did not cross that final few centimeters because that vertical pupil was changing.

The pupil began to contract from a vertical slit and round out. The yellowish-green fluorescent glow covering the iris faded bit by bit, and the color revealed beneath was that of a normal human eye.

The werewolf's entire body was trembling violently, as if two personalities were fighting within the same shell. Bestiality suppressed humanity to the very bottom, but humanity was crawling its way back up.

Then, that mouth covered in black fur opened.

Between its fangs, a distorted and warped syllable was squeezed out. "Fan... Brother Fan..."

Lin Fan's hand froze completely.

Those two words—this fucking thing was Zhou Kai.

"Kaizi?" Lin Fan's throat tightened. "Did you recognize me?"

The werewolf's body shuddered once more, and then let out a cry, "Awooo..."

Lin Fan assumed a defensive posture.

Meanwhile, the werewolf's pair of eyes, which were returning to normal, rolled and focused on Lin Fan's face.

Its lips wrapped around its fangs, moving laboriously as if it wanted to say something more.

But before it could speak, its entire body's muscles seemed to relax at the exact same instant.

Its three-meter-tall body crashed straight down from a standing position. Lin Fan quickly dodged out of the way, otherwise he would likely have been crushed to death by it.

The werewolf lay flat on the ground and didn't get up.

Its chest cavity was still rising and falling, but the frequency was dropping drastically.

Then, that massive body began to undergo a transformation.

The black fur slowly vanished.

Beneath the skin, the bones emitted a faint crunching sound, contracting inward starting from the extremities of its limbs.

The three-meter length of its body compressed visibly to the naked eye, and its wolf-like hands slowly degenerated, revealing human finger joints.

Its spine shortened, and its ribs reorganized.

Its wolf-shaped skull pulled back inch by inch. Its muzzle collapsed, its fangs retracted into its gums, and the arc of its jaw arch narrowed and shortened, piecing back together into a human outline.

The entire process took less than a minute.

In the end, nothing was left on the rock surface except a naked human body, limbs splayed out, facing upwards.

Zhou Kai.

He was even thinner than when he was buried during the day.

His ribs protruded one by one, and the suture line sewn by Xu Zhixia on his abdomen was still there, but the surrounding skin was white.

Lin Fan returned the dagger to his waist, crossed over to his side in two steps, and crouched down.

Two fingers pressed against the side of his neck.

There was a pulse.

Weak, but steady.

Without thinking further, he scooped Zhou Kai up from the ground in one go, hoisted him onto his shoulders, and charged down the slope at the edge of the rock wall.

With those few wolf howls just now, it was impossible for no one in the Karst Cave to have heard them.

Sure enough, before he even turned into the cave entrance, the place inside was already in an uproar.

The firelight reflected several figures.

Yang Ningcong shrank behind the furthest stone wall, clutching a sharpened wooden stick in his hand as he hid behind Song Ya.

Xu Zhixia and Su Qingxue stood on either side of the campfire, one holding a shovel, the other protecting her lower abdomen with one hand.

Carrying Zhou Kai on his shoulder, Lin Fan stepped into the range of the firelight.

Yang Ningcong was the first to clearly see what was on his shoulder.

That sharpened stick clattered onto the ground with a loud bang.

"Brother Fan, you... why did you dig him back out again?!"

Yang Ningcong shrank back three steps, his back pressed tightly against the stone wall. "He was just buried during the day! You dug him up before the dirt on his grave was even dry? What on earth are you trying to do?"

Lin Fan ignored him and laid Zhou Kai flat beside the campfire.

Afterward, he pulled a piece of cloth over Zhou Kai's private parts. "Zhixia, come over here."

Xu Zhixia was already walking over.

The moment she reached Zhou Kai's side, she looked at his face first.

The flickering firelight cast shifting shadows across that face. Xu Zhixia's movements paused for a beat.

That wasn't right.

When she personally closed these eyes during the day, the skin was grayish-blue.

The lips were purplish-blue, and the nail beds lacked color.

That was a corpse that had already ceased all vital signs; she had checked the carotid artery, checked the breathing, and checked the corneal reflex.

All three items were zeroed out, confirming death with no room for ambiguity.

But now, Zhou Kai's lips were white—the kind of pallor after massive blood loss.

The facial muscles were relaxed, lacking the waxy texture that came with postmortem rigidity.

His ribcage was moving, the amplitude very shallow, but it was indeed rising and falling.

"Song Ya, hold a torch for me." Song Ya hurriedly grabbed a torch. After Xu Zhixia took another look, this truly wasn't a corpse.

"What's going on?" Xu Zhixia raised her head to look at Lin Fan.

Lin Fan stood to the side. He didn't immediately answer Xu Zhixia's question, only urging, "Check Zhou Kai first."

They had fought up above for such a long time; just in case Zhou Kai had strained his wounds, Lin Fan was worried they would miss the optimal rescue window.

Xu Zhixia didn't press further, placing two fingers on the inner side of Zhou Kai's wrist.

Radial artery pulse: present, very weak, but the rhythm was regular.

This was impossible.

For a person with a full-thickness abdominal perforation, a torn stomach wall, blood loss exceeding 1,500 milliliters, and a heart that had stopped beating for at least several hours, to be almost back to normal now?

Xu Zhixia's fingertip pressed against that radial artery for a few extra seconds, confirming it wasn't her own hallucination.

The pulse truly existed, regular and strong.

It didn't feel like the chaotic rhythm disorder of a flash in the pan; it was steady cardiac pumping.

She let go of his wrist, her gaze shifting down to Zhou Kai's abdomen.

The stitches were still there.

Those dozens of stitches of crude hemp thread spanned the entire abdominal surface, from the left rib to the right hip.

But the condition of the skin around the thread was completely different from the afternoon.

When it was just sewn up during the day, the edges of the incision were swollen and everted, serum was oozing from both sides of the sutures, and the wound was soaked in a pink exudate. That was the inflammatory reaction a fresh wound should have.

Now the exudate was gone.

The tissue at the edges of the incision had shrunk back from swelling into a flat, smooth line. The fit of the skin and flesh beneath the sutures was more than ten times tighter than during the day.

This wasn't a normal healing process.

For a normal human body, going from an open abdominal wound to the beginning of granulation tissue filling it in required at least forty-eight to seventy-two hours.

How long had passed since then? Five hours? Ten hours?

"Pulse condition is normal." Xu Zhixia withdrew her hand, lifting her face toward Lin Fan. "Stable heart rate, slightly slow, but not dangerous."

She paused for a moment and pointed at that suture line.

"The abdominal wound... the healing speed is abnormal. All the blood has been absorbed, and the wound edges have already begun preliminary adhesion. At this rate, another twelve hours will be enough to remove the stitches."

"During the day, he was a corpse as dead as they come." Xu Zhixia lowered her voice. "Lin Fan, what on earth happened?"

Yang Ningcong stretched more than half of his body out from behind the stone wall. Although he was afraid, his curiosity outweighed his fear.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute..." His brain spun a few times. "You're saying Zhou Kai is alive?"

No one answered him.

"No... Brother Fan, didn't you say during the day that there was no saving him? Didn't Xu Zhixia say the success rate was zero?"

Still no one paid him any mind.

"Then what is he considered to be? A corpse coming back to life?"