Chapter 286: Zombie Farming Workshop (Part 2)

‘So the bodies that woman was dragging away during our negotiation ended up here, part of the processing line.’

“Tsk, tsk. So efficient… And then those Awakened Ones come to harvest the crystals.”

Lin Fan nodded.

“This ‘boss’ is a real farmer… But with health this low, forget it.”

‘Just like with that big pig. I’ll just let them finish mutating and then kill them. It’s not like they can break out of these cages anytime soon…’

“AHHH—!”

Just as Lin Fan was about to move past the cages and head deeper inside, a shrill, desperate scream suddenly erupted from behind a partition door further in the workshop. “Let go of me! Don’t touch me!”

“Wang Wei, you’ve lost your mind!” a man’s voice cried out.

SLAP! The sound was immediately followed by a loud smack and the tearing of fabric.

Lin Fan frowned deeply.

‘That was too loud. Even through the thick walls, a scream like that echoes in this empty factory. If that pig has sharp hearing and gets woken up, I’ll have waited for nothing.’

‘Courting death!’

Lin Fan’s eyes went cold, and a spear appeared in his hand.

He moved like a leopard stalking through a dark jungle, keeping his body low as he skirted the cages holding the mutants and crept toward the source of the sound.

…

This area must have been a spare pen for holding live pigs. Unlike the heavy-duty cages for the mutants outside, the enclosures here were flimsy and crude—just a few layers of wire mesh and wooden planks. They were clearly meant for imprisoning “ordinary people” who posed no threat.

The pens were divided into two sections. The cage on the left held five or six sallow, emaciated men. Two of them clung to the iron bars, their hands reaching out as they cursed under their breath. The rest, however, had numb, lifeless eyes, huddled in the corner like cattle awaiting slaughter.

Hearing the screams from outside, none of them dared to speak, let alone stand up. Fear and oppression had completely broken their spirits.

The cage on the right was larger, holding over a dozen young women. Their condition was even more dire. Most were in tatters, their bodies covered in obvious scars and bruises, their eyes as vacant as dead embers. They were now huddled together, trembling, heads bowed, too afraid to watch what was happening outside the cage. They clamped their hands over their mouths, stifling any sound.

Three men in meat-packing plant uniforms were gathered around a woman they had dragged out. The ground was littered with empty liquor bottles and crushed cookie wrappers. The air was thick with the sharp smell of liquor and the frenzied stench of utter desperation.

“What’s all the screaming! Shut the hell up!” One of the men was straddling the woman, violently ripping at what was left of her clothes. He glared viciously toward the cage, at the two men clinging to the bars. “You think I’m crazy? I fucking lost my mind a long time ago!”

“We’re trapped here! If I hadn’t groveled like a dog, dragged corpses, and fed the zombies for them, you think you’d still be alive right now instead of being zombie food?”

At this, a flicker of deep-seated fear crossed Wang Wei’s eyes, but it was quickly swallowed by a wave of feverish brutality. He grabbed a nearby liquor bottle, took a huge swig, and roared as he pointed outside.

“Who’s the reason you two can fucking stand there and glare at me? It’s me! It’s because I’m the one who gets you a few extra goddamn cookies every day!

“There’s a monster in the front yard, zombies everywhere outside, and the bridge is out! Fuck! You want me to not go crazy? What the hell am I supposed to do if I don’t go crazy?!”

He suddenly broke into a grin, pointing at the woman beneath him and then at the cage door.

“…Stop playing high and mighty. You two just bow your heads, say you’re sorry, and we’ll be good brothers again. I’ll open the cage and let you two have a turn… At least we’ll have some company on our way to hell!”

“You…!” The two men clinging to the fence dug their fingers into the rusty mesh. They gritted their teeth, their eyes bloodshot. They wanted to scream back at him, but it felt like their throats were stuffed with cotton; not a single word would come out.

The single word “no” felt impossibly heavy.

Because Wang Wei was telling the truth.

The three of them had been captured by this group. It was Wang Wei who, with his silver tongue, had talked his way out of the cages. He became a foreman for the menial labor, which is how they managed to eat.

Every time someone was chosen to be fed to the zombies, he would pull some strings to have the two of them skipped over, choosing someone else to go instead. That’s how they had survived this long… But was it right?

Wang Wei had bought their lives with his own evil. Now, watching their former savior become a violent Demon, they felt a profound sense of powerlessness and absurdity.

To condemn Wang Wei was to deny the legitimacy of their own survival. But to condone his actions was to become Demons themselves. Even their silence felt like part of the sin.

“Heh, Brother Wei’s right. Who isn’t crazy?” said a scrawny, weasel-faced man beside him. His lecherous eyes greedily roamed over the woman’s pale thighs. “Normally, this prime stuff is reserved for the boss and the captains…”

“Good for us now that the big shots are all dead! We get their leftovers.” The scrawny man licked his chapped lips, apparently deciding one woman wasn’t enough. He turned and strode to the women’s cage on the right, ignoring the chorus of terrified gasps from within as he yanked open the unlocked iron door.

“Ah! No!” With a short scream, he violently dragged another young girl in a tattered T-shirt from the huddled group of women.