Chapter 184: She Can’t Give Up
Chapter 184: She Can’t Give Up
The first zombie tears through most of the door and forces half of its body inside. Anran clutches Doll tightly and squeezes into the remaining space behind the door with the little girl.
Before the zombie can pinpoint the source of Doll’s cries, it lunges straight into the lilies. The fully bloomed flowers react instantly—seven stamens move as if they have a will of their own, burrowing into the zombie’s eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. The petals, still growing, open and close rhythmically, like grasping claws, smothering the zombie’s entire face.
The scene is grotesque, almost like a tiny mouth devouring the zombie’s head.
In mere moments, the zombie’s skull is completely “eaten.”
The flower pistil absorbs the rich nutrients of decayed flesh and rotting blood. Almost immediately, the lily splits and multiplies. That’s when Anran notices a subtle difference—
As the stamens absorb the zombie’s flesh, the lilies flourish. The rich and nutritious zombie blood causes the flower to split and grow multiple heads. A realization dawns on Anran—there is a difference between how the roots and stamens consume zombies. When the roots feed, the flower stem grows taller, the buds split apart, and new lilies sprout. But when the stamens feed, a single lily divides into multiple-headed blooms.
It doesn’t matter to Anran how they work. All she needs is for them to keep feeding, to keep destroying the zombies in front of her.
Under the stimulation of her supernatural ability, the lilies thrive, treating the decaying zombie corpses as the most fertile soil in the world. They flourish, growing vigorously, drinking deeply from death.
For now, death has been postponed.
But Anran herself is starving. She won’t last much longer.
She holds the wailing Doll, squeezed into the narrow space with the little girl, and feels her body weakening. Hunger gnaws at her insides like a beast. Her legs tremble, then buckle. She collapses to the ground.
The little girl behind her quickly reaches out to catch her.
A small clink echoes in the suffocating silence.
A crystal core falls to the floor.
Anran looks up and sees the remains of the zombie hanging from the broken door. The lilies have already drained it dry, leaving behind nothing but a skeleton. Green buds sprout from its bones, and its hollow skull is crammed full of flower bulbs. The brain tissue inside has likely been completely absorbed.
The crystal core must have been squeezed out from the skull, rolling to a stop at her feet.
Next to her, under the door, is a row of white hand bones and lily bulbs. Every zombie hand that has tried to claw through the gap has been devoured, leaving only skeletal remains.
Anran’s stomach clenches violently. Hunger blurs her thoughts, but another terrifying realization strikes her—
The lilies that have grown flower bulbs… have stopped moving.
They are no longer devouring zombies.
They have lost their spirituality.
Because her energy has been depleted.
She is running on empty.
Anran subconsciously grabs the crystal core from the ground. Through the jagged opening in the broken door, she sees more zombies stepping over the remains of their own kind, closing in on her.
Her breath hitches.
She stumbles back, clutching the crystal core tightly.
She can’t stop. She can’t give up.
She forces herself to release whatever energy she has left, willing her body to keep going.
She is a mother.
Her child is hungry.
If she can just survive this moment, if she can just hold on, she can feed Doll. She can’t let the child starve and die with her.
Anran’s vision blurs. Her body screams in protest. Her energy is dangerously close to depletion.
But she digs deeper.
There has to be more.
Just a little more.
Don’t die! Don’t die! Don’t die!!!