The Villainous Female Side Character Pretends to Be an Omega in the Apocalypse and Raises a Cat - Chapter 36

Tonight, they were heading out of the base to investigate the anomalies of the mutated animals.

Meng Qinghe was wiping her dagger, the cold metallic touch under her fingertips slightly calming her racing heart.

Beside her, Chi Yingdong was checking her equipment and adjusting her wrist guards, her tall frame outlined by the black combat suit.

Suddenly, a piercing air-raid siren tore through the silence.

Both looked up simultaneously toward the north.

“Let’s go,” Chi Yingdong said, her voice low and tense.

On the road leading to the northern part of the base, panicked civilians rushed toward the inner city.

The cries of children, chaotic footsteps, and the sound of dropped objects intertwined.

As they moved forward, Meng Qinghe occasionally caught snippets of curses.

The weather was sweltering, and everyone’s temper was short.

If not for the dire circumstances, fights might have broken out.

In contrast, ability users moved against the flow, silently and swiftly gathering toward the outer perimeter.

At a corner, a woman carrying an infant nearly collided with Chi Yingdong. She sidestepped nimbly while reaching out to steady the stumbling mother.

“Thank you,” the woman said, but before she could finish, she was swept forward by the surging crowd.

“Qingqing, stay close to me,” Chi Yingdong whispered, pulling Meng Qinghe along as they moved outward.

The closer they got to the perimeter, the heavier the scent of blood in the air grew.

Meng Qinghe felt her throat tighten. She noticed Chi Yingdong’s nostrils flare slightly, her lips pressed into a thin line.

When they finally reached the base’s main gate, the scene before them made Meng Qinghe gasp.

As expected, it was an attack by mutated animals.

And after numerous battles, the mutated animals had grown more cunning.

Meng Qinghe saw a group of koalas, their bodies swollen to more than twice their pre-apocalypse size, their claws fiercely tearing at the metal netting, producing an ear-grating screech.

Besides koalas, there were many other mutated animals: cheetahs, monkeys, pandas…

Seeing them in person was a completely different experience from viewing images.

These mutated animals were far larger than imagined.

And just as described in the records, their eyes glowed with an eerie crimson.

Meng Qinghe tightened her grip on the dagger, her heart racing but her gaze resolute.

She noticed the koalas’ claws had grown unusually sharp, and they were climbing at an incredible speed, attempting to scale the fence.

While the koalas drew the attention of most ability users, elephants took the opportunity to ram the walls with their massive bodies. As the walls crumbled, cheetahs and monkeys immediately surged through the breach.

Screams erupted instantly.

“Over here! Mutated animals have broken through!”

Some ability users, hearing the cries, shifted their focus and began defending the breach.

Meng Qinghe frowned at the scene and asked in confusion, “Are they… coordinating their attacks?”

Chi Yingdong’s brow furrowed deeply. “Yes.”

Before she could say more, a sharp cry echoed from above.

Meng Qinghe looked up to see a gigantic bird diving at an astonishing speed, a mutated eagle.

The eagle’s spread wings seemed to blot out the sky, its sharp claws gleaming coldly in the rising sunlight.

But faster than the eagle were Chi Yingdong’s ice spikes, which shot straight through the eagle’s right eye.

Yet, the injured eagle showed no sign of pain and continued its assault toward them.

Meng Qinghe dodged while speaking, “It doesn’t feel pain? Has it turned into a zombie?”

Chi Yingdong wasn’t sure either. She gathered her ability in her palm and shot out another ice spike.

She threw it accurately, piercing the eagle’s hind leg. Blood dripped from the sky.

The eagle’s flying speed noticeably slowed, but it didn’t give up.

The eagle drew closer.

Chi Yingdong didn’t delay any longer. With a shift in her thoughts, frost spread from the eagle’s wound across its entire body.

Soon, the eagle turned into an ice sculpture mid-air and plummeted downward.

The ability users below had already noticed the commotion in the sky and retreated. Only the mutated animals continued charging forward, getting crushed by the falling eagle.

This impact killed most of the mutated animals, immediately reducing the pressure on the ability users.

A colorful array of abilities was unleashed, striking the mutated animals.

Half an hour later, a pile of mutated animal corpses lay on the ground.

A while later, ordinary people emerged from corners and began collecting the mutated animal carcasses.

Ability users despised mutated animal meat, but these people didn’t mind. With this meat, they could survive for a long time.

Chi Yingdong noticed a small, pitch-black snake among the pile of mutated animal corpses. Taking advantage of the chaotic crowd, it swiftly slithered away into the distance.

All the mutated animals they had encountered so far were much larger than before the apocalypse.

This black snake, no thicker than a thumb, seemed rather unusual.

Chi Yingdong called out to Meng Qinghe, “We might have a clue. Let’s follow it.”

Before Meng Qinghe could react, Chi Yingdong grabbed her and pulled her forward.

The black snake was heading toward the Shanghai Zoo.

Standing at the zoo entrance, Meng Qinghe couldn’t help but lament how much things had changed.

Even though she had never been to Shanghai, she was familiar with its zoo.

It used to be the largest zoo in Shanghai, receiving countless visitors every day.

But now, the zoo’s sign hung crookedly, and the ground was a mess.

As Meng Qinghe entered the zoo, her doubts grew deeper. There wasn’t a single animal in sight; every enclosure was empty.

Had all the animals gone to attack the base?

“Qingqing, look here.”

Hearing Chi Yingdong call her, Meng Qinghe immediately went over.

Chi Yingdong pointed to a trail of muddy footprints.

The mud on the footprints was still damp, not yet dried by the sun, indicating they were recent.

Besides the two of them, there was a third person in the zoo.

Chi Yingdong deduced the direction the person had taken from the footprints and led Meng Qinghe to follow.

They kept walking forward. The enclosures on both sides were empty, and further ahead was the zoo staff dormitory.

Upon approaching, they noticed clothes drying on the windowsill of one of the dormitory rooms.

Uncertain whether the person inside was controlling the mutated animals or how strong they were, Meng Qinghe and Chi Yingdong didn’t act rashly.

The two made simple disguises and hid about a hundred meters away from the dormitory.

Chi Yingdong spotted the little black snake again. It slithered out of the dormitory building. Once it had moved some distance away, she immediately went to catch it.

She wanted to see if the person in the dormitory would come out if the snake didn’t return.

Instinctively disliking snakes, she simply encased the black snake in an ice dome.

Watching the black snake repeatedly bump its head against the ice dome, Meng Qinghe sighed inwardly. If only little Yaoyao were here, she could communicate with the snake.

Just as this thought crossed Meng Qinghe’s mind, she suddenly heard an unfamiliar voice.

“Despicable humans. Humans are indeed cunning and treacherous.”

Meng Qinghe looked doubtfully at the black snake inside the ice barrier. The snake met her gaze without a trace of fear.

The ice barrier, formed by her ability, isolated the little snake from other abilities. Having briefly regained clarity, the snake immediately began its tirade.

She heard the voice shouting, “Go ahead and kill me if you dare!”

Meng Qinghe asked, “Are you asking to die?”

The black snake fell silent.

It was just venting, if it truly had the courage to die, it wouldn’t have listened to that woman in the first place.

“Grandmother was right. None of the women down the mountain are any good.”

The more the black snake thought about it, the more aggrieved it felt. The first time it came down the mountain, it was captured and imprisoned in a zoo under the guise of being for its own good.

When the world finally changed and no one was watching it, it tried to slip back into the mountains, only to be caught again by some unknown woman.

Today, it hadn’t even thought of escaping, yet it was captured yet again.

The black snake began to sob quietly.

This was the first time Meng Qinghe had heard a snake cry, and she had no idea what to do. She looked to Chi Yingdong for help.

Chi Yingdong noticed Meng Qinghe’s troubled expression and asked, “What’s wrong?”

Meng Qinghe pointed at the black snake inside the ice barrier. “She’s crying.”

After saying this, she turned to the black snake and said, “Stop crying. It sounds awful. If you tell me what you know, I might be able to get you out of here.”

The black snake, insulted for its crying, felt even more wronged. But then it heard the possibility of going home.

It pressed against the ice barrier, looking at Meng Qinghe with hopeful eyes. “You’ll really let me go back?”

Meng Qinghe nodded. “As long as you tell me what’s going on.”

The black snake nodded eagerly. “I’ll tell you everything, as long as you let me go home to my grandmother.”

Meng Qinghe asked, “Why did you attack the base?”

The little snake grumbled discontentedly, “It’s not like we wanted to go.”

It replied, “A woman made us go.”

Meng Qinghe continued, “What woman? What’s her ability level like?”

The black snake had no idea what an ability level was. It spilled everything it knew: “She’s the woman living in the house behind us. I don’t know what an ability is, but whenever I’m near her, I can’t help but obey her.”

Meng Qinghe rephrased her question: “Do many small animals feel compelled to obey her when they’re around her?”

The black snake thought for a moment and immediately denied it. “No, they attacked the base because there’s something inside that attracts us.”

Meng Qinghe asked, “What is it?”

The black snake glanced quickly at Meng Qinghe. “I don’t know. We never actually entered the base.”

The conversation ended there.

Meng Qinghe relayed what the black snake had said to Chi Yingdong.

Chi Yingdong was initially surprised that Meng Qinghe could communicate with the snake, but then he realized that, in a way, they were similar.

It was just that cats and snakes didn’t seem to have a language barrier.

After thinking for a moment, Chi Yingdong said to Meng Qinghe, “Ask it if it knows when the person in the dormitory building will come out.”

Meng Qinghe repeated the question.

The black snake thought for a while. “Soon, probably. She should be going out to the Sichuan Pavilion to dig for winter bamboo shoots.”

The Sichuan Pavilion housed several pandas. To make it easier to care for them, the zoo had planted a bamboo grove, and it was now the season for digging bamboo shoots.

Chi Yingdong picked up the ice barrier and headed toward the Sichuan Pavilion.

The pandas in the Sichuan Pavilion were nowhere to be seen.

Just as Meng Qinghe thought the people in the dormitory building might not be in the mood for bamboo shoots today and that they might have to wait for someone, a woman appeared.

Even in the apocalypse, she was still wearing a white dress and a pair of white sneakers.

If Meng Qinghe had to describe the woman, only three words came to mind: a delicate flower.

She looked innocent, pure, and harmless.

Why would someone like that want the base’s animals to attack the base?

The woman approached.

Meng Qinghe found her familiar.

But the memory was too distant, and she couldn’t recall it right away.

When she snapped back to reality, Meng Qinghe noticed Chi Yingdong staring at the delicate flower with a grim expression.

Meng Qinghe asked, “Do you know her?”

Chi Yingdong nodded and then shook her head. “I know her, but not well.”

How could she not know her?

That was the female protagonist of this world, Ye Rourou!

But Chi Yingdong was equally puzzled… why would she appear here?