The only good thing about the nighttime was that it was much cooler without the scorching sun of the daytime.
By now, Lin Qiao was walking in a more natural and much faster way. The stiff-legged feeling from before had completely disappeared.
What had happened? Why was she so much more flexible now?
She kept thinking about this while walking. Suddenly, her nose twitched as a trace of a strange aroma wafted toward her from an unknown source,
'Eh? This aroma! It has to be something edible!'
Lin Qiao instinctively had this thought as she caught the aroma. This had to be the sweet smell of food. She raised her head to sniff it carefully, and found that it came from the woods on the left-hand side.
She turned around and followed the aroma, walking into the woods comprising of the oddly shaped trees.
The woods were completely dark, but that didn't bother her as she now had an owl-like night vision and was able to see everything clearly.
Her eyes were sharp, as was her sense of smell. It seemed that becoming a zombie wasn't so bad after all.
The closer she got to the woods, the stronger the aroma became. She had also detected some other faint aromas, but she didn't give up on the one that she had caught in the first place. She moved through the woods, pushing aside the branches and vines with her hands to create a path where there was none.
Some vines and leaves with thorns scratched her skin, but she felt nothing.
She continued on into the woods, sensing the source of the aroma getting closer and closer.
'Almost there! Something edible! It's something edible for zombies! It isn't a human though, is it?' She prayed in her heart, promising herself that if the aroma belonged to a human, she would bite her own flesh off and eat that instead!
She halted when reached a large tree and stared at the trunk near the roots. There was a hole in the tree trunk, which was where the aroma was coming from.
'It isn't a human being! Thank god!'
The hole was small, just the size of a human head. She squatted and lowered her head to look inside.
Squeak!
All of a sudden, a fist-sized figure darted out of the hole at lightning speed and flew directly at her face.
There was no time for her to lift her arm and defend herself from it.
'Holy smokes! What the hell is that?' Feeling spooked, Lin Qiao unconsciously bared her sharp teeth and instinctively backed away while fiercely biting at the black creature.
Squeak!
A horrible shriek came from Lin Qiao's mouth.
To be exact, the shriek came from the thing in her mouth.
She felt an intensely struggling lump of fur between her teeth. Sweet blood had been flowing from that thing into her mouth as her sharp teeth had bitten into it!
Sure enough, the thing became limp after a short struggle.
She raised her hand and removed the thing from her mouth to take a look at it, only to be struck speechless.
Damn it! It was a very chubby mutant mouse.
Lin Qiao dangled this dying mouse before her eyes to get a better look at it.
After its mutation, this mouse hadn't grown in shape, but its two front teeth were especially sharp and long, sticking out of its mouth on each side. This mouse's fur was also much longer than that of normal ones.
Lin Qiao licked the blood on her mouth. To her surprise, she actually felt no awful feelings. The blood in her mouth was fishy, sweet, and... acceptable.
She smiled while holding the mouse by its tail.
If this mutant mouse was edible, could she eat other animals as well? As to whether there would be any adverse effects, she would know only after finishing up this mouse.
Squeak!
At that moment, some strange noises were heard from inside the hole in the tree. Judging by the noise, Lin Qiao figured that those could be some baby mice.
She put a hand inside the hole, and as expected, found a few tiny things which were extremely soft and smooth. When she saw the five to six furless baby mice on her palm, she suddenly had an idea. These baby mice weren't even big enough to fill the gaps between her teeth, so she wondered if she could keep them in her space.
With this thought, she concentrated and said one word inside her head.
进去.
'In.'
In the next second, she found herself on the lush grassland, with the large mouse in one hand and the baby mice in the other.
She wanted to keep these baby mice, but she had already killed the adult mouse. She glanced at the adult mouse and then at the six baby mice.
What should she feed them with? There was nothing here in this space but grass and lake water.
She put the adult mouse aside, squatted down, and conveniently picked a handful of grass leaves. She then wadded them up with one hand before putting them on the ground and shaping them into a small nest. After that, she placed the baby mice inside the nest.
'Oh well, I'll leave them here for now. I'll just eat them if they can't survive.'
She turned around to look at the adult mouse, wondering how she would eat it as she had no tool to build a fire. Besides, she didn't know if zombies needed their food to be cooked or not. What if cooked food gave her diarrhea? If that happened, would she keep on eating raw meat?
She directly left the space with the adult mouse clutched in her hand.
Looking around, she saw nothing but trees. She had walked a great distance from any human settlement, and couldn't find anything to start a fire with in this wilderness.
And unfortunately, she didn't have a fire superpower.
At last, she made up her mind while staring at the dead mouse, then lifted her claws and began to skin it with them.
She didn't feel much about eating mice, because she had once spent half a month in a forest during devil training. In the whole fifteen days, she survived by eating only what she could find in the forest. Back then, mice could be counted as a gourmet meal, as she and her teammates also dined on snakes, frogs, worms, and other creatures... However at that time, she and her teammates had one advantage, which was having a fire.
But now…
She sighed as she skillfully opened up the adult mouse. The mouse had a thin membrane under its skin, along which, Lin Qiao finished skinning the mouse quite easily without causing a bleed.
She sharply twisted the mouse's head off and threw it away, then gently sliced open the mouse from its chest all the way to below its belly button with her nail. After that, she dug out the intestines without breaking them, threw them away, and then scooped out the liver.
She sniffed at it, and unexpectedly, she sensed no unpleasant smell. She then stuck out her tongue gave it an experimental lick, finding it to be soft and a little warm.
She took a deep breath, then put the raw mouse liver into her mouth. She was a little too scared to chew it, so she held it in her mouth for a while. Surprisingly, it seemed a little sweet! She couldn't help but bite into it.
The texture of the mouse liver was soft and tender, and it was unexpectedly tasty, with no strong scent of blood or any other off-putting flavor. It was so sweet and soft that she only needed to chew a few times before finishing it off.
After having her first taste of raw food, she felt less stressed about the whole thing. So, she put the mouse meat directly into her mouth and began to chew. In the end, she even chewed up the bones and swallowed them as well.
At that moment, she suddenly thought of her stomach and hurriedly lifted her dress to look at her belly which was wrapped in cloth strips. She hesitated, not sure if she should unwrap the cloth to check whether her stomach was still inside her body or not!
Earlier on, she hadn't paid much attention except noting that only her intestines were exposed, and not the other organs.
But now, she actually began to worry. If her stomach was gone, would the food that she just ate simply fall out?
She touched her stomach and felt that it was still torn open though there was no discomfort. She thought about this and that strange sensation overcame her once again. When she had woken up, she saw that the stomach of this body had been ripped apart already. And yet somehow, she still felt hunger!
This was the only feeling that zombies had, wasn't it?