The Zombie I Flirted With After Losing My Memory, Who Was Pretending to be an Alpha, Is Actually My Ex - Chapter 24.1

Chapter 24.1: Seeking a Mark

The Alpha’s pheromones surged in, strong and overbearing. The peak of pleasure forced a moan from Xie Jinbing’s lips. The enchanting sound spilling from her mouth continuously stimulated Teng Xi’s brain, leaving her mind a total blank. She allowed Xie Jinbing to reach up and hook her arms around her neck.

The restless turbulence inside her body was finally suppressed, yet Xie Jinbing became somewhat addicted to the pleasure of the pheromone fusion, unwilling to let go.

A temporary mark can be completed through the exchange of body fluids. The effect is identical to a permanent mark, except it does not last long and fades over time—unlike a permanent mark, which can only be removed through surgery.

In the past, when she and Teng Xi were moved by passion, she would often find herself seeking a permanent mark, but Teng Xi had been as disciplined as a celibate monk. No matter how she tempted her, Teng Xi would never mark her permanently, even though they had done everything else.

Xie Jinbing’s gaze dimmed as she forced herself to pull away from Teng Xi.

Teng Xi, having been forcibly kissed, wore a dazed expression. There were traces of moisture at the corner of her mouth, making her look incredibly silly. Her heart thundered so loudly in her chest that all she could hear was that rhythmic, heavy booming in her ears.

“Xi,” Xie Jinbing spoke.

“Ah?” Teng Xi instantly snapped out of her daze. Seeing the redness at the corners of Xie Jinbing’s eyes, her entire body turned as red as a boiled shrimp. The sound of her heartbeat pierced her eardrums, making her whole being vibrate in sync.

Xie Jinbing let out a soft laugh. However, the current situation did not allow the two to continue their entanglement. She pointed to herself and then signed: “Surgery.”

“You’re going to deliver the baby? But…” Teng Xi regained some of her senses, her gaze moving past Xie Jinbing to the pregnant woman. The woman was doubled over in pain, groans spilling from her lips. She opened her mouth to emit rasping sounds, and the sight of her eyeballs—already clouded with a faint black mist—made Teng Xi hesitate.

Xie Jinbing opened her mouth and found that aside from a stray word or two, she still couldn’t speak. She didn’t bother explaining. She understood the pregnant woman’s condition perfectly; it was extremely similar to her own, so she knew the woman wouldn’t easily succumb to a full mutation.

Without further explanation, Xie Jinbing snatched Teng Xi’s backpack and shoved her out the door.

“What’s going on?” Feng Sisi stepped forward with concern. “Master, why is your face so red? Are you okay? You weren’t affected by the pheromones, were you?”

Si Qinghan watched her from the side with an unreadable expression. With her sharp sense of smell, she detected something unusual. She leaned in close to Teng Xi, but just as she was about to take a careful sniff, the office door opened again.

Xie Jinbing pointed her index finger at Si Qinghan, then pointed inside the room. Without leaving a single word, she turned and went back in.

“Me? Go in?” Si Qinghan pointed at her own nose and looked to the others for help.

“It must be the pregnant woman’s communication device,” Yao Zhi immediately made the connection.

Just then, a doctor stepped forward somewhat tremulously. Her words were shaking to the extreme, yet she insisted on finishing her sentence: “I—I will go in with you. To help Dr. Xie… deliver the baby.”

Everyone looked at her in confusion. Teng Xi immediately recognized her—she was the doctor the pregnant woman had saved in the underground garage.

“I can do it! I did a rotation in the OB-GYN department during my internship!” The doctor shouted as if to bolster her own courage. The sudden loud voice drew everyone’s gaze, causing her face to turn beet red.

“Let’s go then. Everyone knows you can deliver babies now,” Si Qinghan chuckled, patting the doctor on the head. “She won’t eat you. You’ve got me there, haven’t you?”

For the time being, the others could only wait anxiously in the reading room. They listened with trepidation as the zombies continuously hammered on the door, making noise they could do nothing about. The pregnant woman’s pheromones steadily leaked out of the office; even with the door shut, they couldn’t be fully blocked. Coupled with the increasingly thick scent of blood drifting through the door gap, the zombies outside were becoming even more stimulated.

Fortunately, having learned the zombies’ weakness, they had prepared countermeasures. They had pre-filled bottles with water, and everyone gripped their weapons, ready for combat at any second—everyone except Teng Xi.

She looked as though her soul had been snatched away. She walked mechanically to a corner and sat down slowly, curling up with her arms around her knees. Her Miaodao was laid on the floor in front of her.

“Something’s wrong, something is very wrong,” Feng Sisi frowned and shook her head while watching Teng Xi. She nudged the person next to her. “Mama Yao, what do you think happened to Master? She couldn’t have been scared by the delivery, right? If so, what’s going to happen when my Mistress gives birth? Mistress wouldn’t divorce her because she hates kids, would she? What would Master do then? Would she have to die alone?”

It had to be said that Comrade Feng Sisi’s imagination was formidable. The string of questions left Yao Zhi stunned.

Yao Zhi opened her mouth: “…You really should talk to Si Qinghan less. I’m afraid your parents will come and kill us.”

Neither of them could have guessed that only one thing was looping in Teng Xi’s mind:

‘Xie Jinbing is actually an Omega?!’

And she had just given Xie Jinbing a temporary mark!?

For a moment, Teng Xi felt as if the sky was falling. Her heart felt like a tangled mess of yarn with no beginning or end. But following that was an indescribable joy welling up from the depths of her soul. Her feelings for Xie Jinbing had reached a peak with that kiss, forcing her to face the truth: she seemed to have truly fallen in love with Xie Jinbing.

The little person in her heart laboriously pulled a thread from the messy ball of yarn. The answer dangling on the end was so glaring it made the little person panic, dropping it as if it were burning hot, only to pick it up again a second later with heartache.

Teng Xi buried her face in her knees. The exposed nape of her neck was incredibly red.

Time ticked by, minute by minute. The piercing screams from inside the room echoed in everyone’s ears. The reading room door began to bulge under the zombies’ hammering. Someone couldn’t handle the atmosphere—which felt like a slow execution—and dropped their club, screaming and shouting. The patients were already unstable, and this pushed them over the edge; some even climbed onto the windowsills, wanting to jump to end the pain, only to be pulled back by the others.

Cheng Shi forcefully suppressed the restless pheromones in her body, ordering the doctors to move the patients away from the windows. She wanted to say something comforting, but her physical discomfort made it impossible to voice a complete sentence.

Yao Zhi looked at Cheng Shi with a hint of pity. She whispered something to Feng Sisi, who showed a moment of hesitation before finally nodding in agreement.

“Director Cheng, how many years have you worked at this hospital?” Yao Zhi asked.

“Twenty-six years.” Cheng Shi twitched her lips, but still couldn’t manage a smile.

“Twenty-six years… that’s so long. Didn’t you come here right after graduation?”

Cheng Shi nodded, her gaze drifting toward Yao Zhi, as if she were looking through her at the 21-year-old version of herself from twenty-six years ago—the girl who had stepped into the mental hospital without hesitation.

“Why did you want to come to a mental hospital? Being a psychologist would have been much more profitable.”

Why? Hearing Yao Zhi’s question, a figure appeared in Cheng Shi’s mind. It was her first love from university, who had developed schizophrenia for various reasons and dropped out in her third year to live in a mental hospital. Even after all these years, she couldn’t forget the sight of that figure jumping from the building. She had lain so quietly in a pool of blood, looking at Cheng Shi with hollow eyes, unable to ever say another word.

Yao Zhi didn’t expect Cheng Shi to answer. She moved on to the next question: “Director Cheng, how long has it been since you took a rest?”

How long? Cheng Shi felt dazed. After her first love died, she had thrown herself entirely into work. Had she rested in all these years? Cheng Shi shook her head.

“Then take a good rest this time. When you wake up, I hope you can accept the pregnant woman and her child.”

Wake up? What does she mean? Cheng Shi looked up at her sharply, but failed to notice someone approaching from behind. A sharp pain hit her neck, and her vision went black as she lost consciousness.

Feng Sisi caught Cheng Shi’s body and lowered her gently, feeling a strange sense of heartache for this woman.

The observing doctors didn’t stop them, understanding their intention.

A short while later, Si Qinghan emerged from the office holding a device that looked like a radio—presumably the communication equipment the woman had mentioned.

“How is it?” the crowd asked anxiously. Si Qinghan’s expression was grim.

She pursed her lips, and it was a long time before she spoke: “The signal was sent out, but there has been no response.”

The straw they were clutching for survival withered instantly. Despair washed over the group.

After constructing a million mental defenses, Teng Xi finally forced herself back to the matter at hand and walked over to Si Qinghan. “Xie… is everything okay in there?”

Si Qinghan saw right through her, but she wasn’t in the mood to tease. She said directly: “The pregnant woman hasn’t turned. Your ‘Sister Xie’ is perfectly safe.”

Teng Xi still managed to choke on air, her face flushing as she sat down with the group of three.

“You know, I find you quite strange,” Si Qinghan said while fiddling with the communication device, her tongue as sharp as ever. “In this situation, you don’t seem worried at all that we’ll be in the zombies’ mouths the next second? Yet sometimes you care so much about others’ safety.” No one else was this calm; there wasn’t a trace of tension on Teng Xi.

Teng Xi leaned against the wall in a lazy posture, saying something that sounded like a joke but could have been serious: “Actually, I could totally jump out from here the moment the zombies break in and escape on my own.”

“Oh? That selfish? I actually admire that about you,” Si Qinghan went along with her.

“Isn’t that right? A great person once said that selfishness is the best survival law for the apocalypse.”

“That ‘great person’ wouldn’t happen to be named Teng Xi, would it?”

“Comrade Xiao Si is very smart!”

Feng Sisi chimed in: “Master, your mindset is truly great. You can still joke at a time like this.”

No one present knew if Teng Xi was being truthful or not, except for Xie Jinbing, who had been with her day and night. If she were there, she would know that Teng Xi meant every word.

Meanwhile, the patients hadn’t stopped talking since Si Qinghan came out. Some psychiatric patients were like that—one second they were in extreme terror, and the next they were excited by gossip.

“Dr. Xie is an orphan?”

Teng Xi secretly pricked up her ears, shifting her position with her blade so she could hear their conversation more clearly.

“I saw it in a magazine last time. She grew up in an orphanage and got into the Capital Medical University through her own hard work. she worked part-time to earn her tuition, and she was recruited by the Red House Medical Institute before she even finished her PhD.”

“That impressive?”

“An associate chief physician at only 27. You tell me if that’s impressive.”

Seeing that the other person didn’t understand the weight of that title, a doctor nearby couldn’t help but chime in: “In our hospital, aside from Dr. Xie, the youngest associate chief was 32 when they got the title.”

Feng Sisi poked Teng Xi. “Master, why do you have such a proud look on your face? They’re talking about Dr. Xie. Your professional field is martial arts.”

“Kid, you don’t understand,” Si Qinghan tapped Feng Sisi’s head, earning her a poke from the hilt of the sword.

The atmosphere somehow lightened, except for the group of men in suits, who still stared at the door in terror, their palms white from gripping their weapons too hard.

Teng Xi thought that perhaps it was because of the abnormal mental states of these two groups that they weren’t as tense or afraid as before.

As time passed, the screams from the office turned from powerful to weak. Doctors moved in and out with blood-stained cloths and hot water, occasionally reporting “Safe.”

The scent of pheromones hadn’t faded, though it was nearly masked by the stronger smell of blood. The zombies outside continued to hammer on the door. Sometimes, looking at the vibrating wall, Teng Xi wondered if they would actually break through the bricks.

“It’s three o’clock,” Teng Xi looked at the wall clock. It had been exactly six hours since Xie Jinbing and the others went in, and six hours since Si Qinghan sent the signal.

“Still no response on the radio?” Yao Zhi asked.

Si Qinghan shook her head reluctantly. Her hands were constantly trying to send out a signal location, but she received nothing but bursts of electronic static.

The four of them felt discouraged. On the door, several bulges had been hammered out by the zombies. They had piled tables and chairs against it, and the vibrating door made a screeching friction sound against the furniture. The patients had cycled through several topics; their emotions occasionally collapsed into tension but were quickly soothed back by the experienced doctors.

“How much longer do you think this door can hold?” Teng Xi nudged Feng Sisi with her elbow.

“Looks like a long shot.”

“Don’t say it!” Yao Zhi and Si Qinghan shouted at Feng Sisi simultaneously, but they couldn’t stop the words from slipping out.

Teng Xi: “?”

“It’s over. Get your weapons ready,” Si Qinghan face-palmed in despair, meeting Teng Xi’s confused gaze. “The Young Lady has another nickname: Jinx.”

Yao Zhi added insult to injury: “The danger we faced back in Section C was all thanks to her jinxing us.”

Feng Sisi looked indignant: “Don’t be so superstitious. That was a coin…ci… dence…”

“Boom—“

Teng Xi watched the door frame collapse as the hinges were torn off by a zombie’s impact. Her mouth hung open. “You call that a fucking coincidence?”

The others were terrified by the sound. Once they reacted, they rushed to the door to brace the tables and chairs with their bodies.

The zombies only slammed into things clumsily; they didn’t think like humans to push the fallen door aside. The door frame, under the pressure, remained standing precariously against the furniture, blocking the lunging claws of the zombies.

“Young Lady! Use your jinx to get someone to come save us!” Si Qinghan roared, using every ounce of strength to brace the door.

Feng Sisi felt like crying. “I’ll ask the Monkey King to send reinforcements!”

The group resisted with all their might. The furniture groaned. The sight of zombies so close made their terror skyrocket, but it also triggered an unexpected burst of strength.

Whether it was the effect of Feng Sisi’s jinx or not, a sky-piercing cry finally erupted from the office.

“She gave birth? She gave birth!”

The sound of a baby’s crying reached everyone’s ears through the door. This cry meant the child was born as a normal human. It acted like a stimulant for the group, making their resistance even more determined.