NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 27: Chapter 27: Harvesting the Crystalline Core
After a full thirty-minute respite, Xiao Yang deemed it time to resume their grim crusade. The next villa's reinforced door yielded to his pry bar with metallic protest. Inside, five corpses twitched to life—two elderly and three juveniles, their unblemished skin suggesting they'd turned during the viral outbreak's initial wave. The tableau of a multigenerational breakfast interrupted by doom made even Xiao Yang's hardened jaw tighten.
"Four for me," he announced, blades already singing through rancid air. The last child zombie—a girl missing her left ear—was left shuddering against a shattered china cabinet. "Wanqing. Finish it."
The Tang sword trembled in her grip. Her thrust went wide, piercing rotting esophagus instead of pineal gland. Putrid blood geysered across her visor.
"Retrieve your blade!" Xiao Yang's command cracked like a gunshot. "Drop steel here and you'll be screaming through a tracheotomy!"
Tears streaked the gore on Mu Wanqing's cheeks as she reclaimed her weapon. The second strike found its mark with a wet crunch, tiny skull collapsing like overripe melon. She stared at the twitching small form, comprehension dawning—this was her Rubicon crossed.
"Sister You—extract the cores." Lu You's hands moved with grim efficiency now, fishing out pearlescent crystals despite the brain matter clinging to her gloves.
By solar zenith, they'd purged ten villas. Xiao Yang's spatial storage bulged with salvaged propane tanks and medicine cabinets. Two juvenile zombies had been preserved as final exams: Lu You's initial botched decapitation (severed arm still twitching as she corrected the stroke) contrasted with Mu Wanqing's sudden lethal grace—a single upward thrust through an eye socket that dropped her target mid-lunge.
The Calculus of Survival
Back at base, shower runoff swirled gray with necrotic particulates. Xiao Yang arrayed fifty crystals on the reclaimed oak table—luminous marbles veined with chronometric sigils.
"Wanqing: ten. Sister You: ten. Mine: thirty."
Protest erupted. Lu You pushed her share back. "These should be yours! We're deadweight without—"
"Deadweight multiplies exponentially below decade thresholds." Xiao Yang pressed the cores into their palms. His left forearm shimmered—15.8 years etched in bioluminescent numerals. "Reach ten years' reserve today or become liability statistics tomorrow."
Demonstration followed: a crystal marked 0Y 364D 19:30:20 drained through palm-contact psychometry. "Miscalibrate by one digit," he warned, "and you'll hemorrhage temporal stability. Understood?"
Their absorption rituals diverged tellingly. Lu You growled through the process like kneading stubborn dough, muscles corded as her personal chronometer leaped from 350 days to 10.3 years. Mu Wanqing's intake was whisper-soft, her enhancement manifesting in ballet-like test steps across the hardwood.
"Feels like swapping lead shoes for moonboots!" Lu You marveled, bicep flexing. "Could flip woks one-handed now!"
Xiao Yang's chuckle died as he noticed Mu Wanqing's trembling lower lip.
"Did I… disappoint you today?" Her whisper could've shattered the crystals between them.
His arms encircled her, combat armor's polymer plates creaking. "Your third kill was textbook. My fault for pushing too hard." The scent of her shampoo—lemongrass and cordite—muffled his next words. "Though if you're truly energized… perhaps a private stamina assessment tonight?"
Postscript: The Empty Vessels
Xiao Yang rotated a spent crystal—now clear as drained battery—between thumb and forefinger. "These aren't trash. Think of them as temporal USB drives." His nail tapped the faint runic grooves. "Safer than skin-to-skin transfers when dealing with… less trustworthy parties."
As Lu You's cleaver began its dinner concerto in the kitchen, the implications hung heavier than the villa's leaded glass windows. These innocuous baubles might yet become apocalypse-era currency—or the seeds of their destruction.