Chapter 237
Chapter 237: The Evolved Super-Virus Infected—She Was Picky About What She Ate
The stink of blood and rot surged up Jiang Tea Tea’s nose.
She planted her flame staff against the wall and held the small female at arm’s length, leaving barely a fist of space between them. “I know I smell good,” she said. “Plenty of things want to eat me.”
Her mouth curled. “The question is whether you’ve got what it takes.”
Jiang Tea Tea was the only demon ever born from the tea tree clan. Luck had always been part of her strength.
She hadn’t clawed her way through the demon clan without being eaten by other great demons by being stupid.
The small female’s nails shot out, long and sharp. She grabbed Jiang Tea Tea’s hand and tried to drive them into her skin, eyes shining like she was thrilled. “Sister, you’re so fierce. I like you.”
How convenient.
Jiang Tea Tea liked her too.
An evolved infected with intelligence and speech—one that could choose what to eat—was a treasure beyond price.
Jiang Tea Tea smiled sweetly. “You’re adorable. I like you too. What’s your name?”
The girl’s red eyes gleamed with excitement. “If sister likes me, sister will willingly let me eat her.”
“Dad said cows raised listening to music are happier, and happy meat is more tender.”
“If sister willingly lets me eat her, that means sister is happy. Sister’s meat will be even more tender than beef.”
She tilted her head, innocent as a doll. “Dad didn’t give me a real name. But Dad calls me Reboot.”
Jiang Tea Tea nodded, generous with praise. “Reboot. Restart. Beginning again. That’s a beautiful name.”
Reboot grinned wide, blood and scraps of flesh lodged between her teeth.
Earlier, the zombie hadn’t been trying to eat Jiang Tea Tea. The zombie had been eaten by Reboot.
The scream had been bait. Reboot had called for “help” on purpose, luring food straight into her arms.
The only problem was the food’s skin was too hard. Even with nails that long, Reboot couldn’t pierce Jiang Tea Tea’s hand.
Jiang Tea Tea caught Reboot’s wrist, twisted, and snapped it back with a sharp crack.
Reboot didn’t even flinch like it hurt. She just kept smiling.
Jiang Tea Tea asked pleasantly, “Reboot, who’s your dad? Tell me his name.”
Reboot giggled. “My dad is my dad. My dad is named my dad. Why, sister—are you trying to steal my dad?”
She shook her head dramatically. “No. Dad loves only me. He likes only me. Dad said I’m his only one.”
Her eyes lit up as if she’d discovered a new toy. “Sister, you smell so good. If I eat you and go see Dad, I’ll smell good too. Dad will like me even more. Right?”
Jiang Tea Tea nodded calmly. “Right. But—”
“There’s no ‘but.'” Reboot lunged, mouth wide, snapping for Jiang Tea Tea’s throat.
Jiang Tea Tea flipped the flame staff off the wall, shoved the end into Reboot’s neck, and slammed her back into the wall with a bang.
Reboot’s teeth clacked on empty air. Her eyes went from red to raging crimson.
“Sister!” she shrieked. “I’m going to eat you! I’m going to eat you! Let me eat you! Make me smell good—please!”
Jiang Tea Tea’s smile didn’t move.
Her flame staff flared, five-colored fire bursting out and wrapping around Reboot like a cage.
“I told you,” Jiang Tea Tea said coldly. “If you can’t do it, then eat shit.”
Reboot screamed. “Ah! Hot—hot—Dad! Save me! Dad—!”
She thrashed, wailing and cursing, but no one came.
Instead, Sui Xuan Chu and Cheng Xiao Ting burst into the room.
“Sister Tea!” Sui Xuan Chu stammered, eyes wide. “W-what are you doing?”
Jiang Tea Tea pressed the head of the flame staff against Reboot’s throat.
The staff reshaped into a ring—an iron collar of firelight—locking around her neck.
The flames vanished. Reboot’s face was revealed again: pretty, pale, eyes still red.
She pressed herself against the wall, suddenly weak and pitiful, and cried, “Brother! Brother, save me! Sister is going to kill me! It hurts!”
Sui Xuan Chu and Cheng Xiao Ting glanced at Reboot, then at Jiang Tea Tea.
They tightened their grips on their iron weapons and stepped in front of Jiang Tea Tea without hesitation.
“Little girl,” Sui Xuan Chu said, voice hard, “it’s not that we won’t save you. It’s that we trust her.”
“As comrades, classmates, friends—we trust each other. Even if she aimed a gun at me, I’d believe there was a bad person behind me. I wouldn’t believe she wanted to blow my head off.”
Reboot’s helpless-victim act cracked. Her face twisted, eyes blazing, lips pulled back as she hissed like a rabid dog.
Sui Xuan Chu and Cheng Xiao Ting both jumped. “Sister Tea—what is she? Infected? Not infected? Half infected?”
Jiang Tea Tea stood upright and yanked the flame staff.
Reboot was dragged to her feet. She was small—maybe one meter forty—like an eleven- or twelve-year-old child.
Jiang Tea Tea answered, voice crisp. “She’s an evolved super-virus infected. Version 3.0.”
Sui Xuan Chu and Cheng Xiao Ting went rigid.
Jiang Tea Tea looked at them sharply. “Is the signal back?”
“The town’s signal isn’t,” Sui Xuan Chu said quickly, “but military signal is fine.”
“Good.” Jiang Tea Tea’s voice dropped. “Notify Commander-in-Chief Chong Ming. Call Cheng Yuan. Tell them we caught an upgraded infected—3.0. Get someone to take her away immediately. There may be answers in her body.”
“Yes!” Both boys lit up with relief and excitement and rushed to transmit the message.
Reboot tried to pry at the fiery ring. The moment her fingers touched it, it burned her. She jerked away, tears welling instantly.
“Sister,” she whimpered, snapping back into pitiful. “It hurts. Can you loosen it?”
Jiang Tea Tea dragged her out by the staff like she was walking a dog. “Your neck hurts. My heart hurts.”
She sighed theatrically. “But I can’t help it. If I don’t keep you like this, you’ll bite me.”
Against Jiang Tea Tea, Reboot’s innocent act was flimsy at best.
Reboot snarled and lunged again.
Jiang Tea Tea didn’t move.
The staff lengthened abruptly, and Reboot was shoved back like she’d hit an invisible wall.
Reboot’s broken hand bone had already healed. Her nails were long again, reaching, grasping—
But she couldn’t touch Jiang Tea Tea.
Two meters of staff stood between them, firelight rippling along it like mockery.
Jiang Tea Tea stepped closer, voice soft and taunting. “Reboot, stop wasting your strength. You can’t beat me.”
She tilted her head. “Why don’t you call your dad? Let him come beat me.”
Reboot’s pale face split with a fresh cut, smeared dark with blood. Black, foul-smelling fluid seeped from it. “Who says I can’t beat you? Who says I can’t eat you?”
She glared. “Wait for me.”
Then she threw her head back and roared.
The roar shook the town. It echoed over rooftops and down streets until even weak citizens and soldiers felt their ears ring.
When the roar died, an eerie silence fell over the town center.
Then Jiang Tea Tea’s earpiece crackled with command.
“All personnel inside Ni Su Town, be advised: aberrant beast-type infected are increasing and approaching the town. The iron wall perimeter is not yet complete. Proceed with caution.”
“Search quickly for survivors and uninfected.”
“And remember: capture infected. Do not execute unless absolutely necessary.”
“Understood,” Jiang Tea Tea answered.
She slammed Reboot into the ground, trying to knock her out.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Reboot only looked more disheveled. She didn’t faint.
Sui Xuan Chu and Cheng Xiao Ting hurried back with special binding ropes and started securing Reboot’s limbs.
Reboot couldn’t break free. She cried, pleaded, called them “brother,” acted hurt, acted scared—so convincingly that anyone who didn’t know better would’ve thought she was a bullied child, not an evolved infected.
They bound her tight.
Jiang Tea Tea snapped the staff ring off… but left a smaller flame ring locked around Reboot’s neck.
Reboot was shoved into Cheng Yuan’s flyer. Cheng Xiao Ting and Military Department personnel escorted her out of town.
Not long after the flyer left, Jiang Tea Tea and the others captured several more infected.
Then a beast roar thundered from the outskirts.
From every direction, massive mutated four-horned beasts appeared—each over ten meters tall, bodies bloated and rotting, weighing tens of tons.
With every step, rotting flesh and black blood sloughed off them.
Some stormed into town.
Some smashed into the unfinished iron wall perimeter. Only a third of the wall was complete—none of it could hold. The beasts crashed through, flattened steel, crushed barricades.
Gunfire erupted.
Abilities flared.
Explosions thundered.
And then it got worse.
Smaller mutated infected beasts poured in too—scaled beasts, cheetahs, white tigers, palm-sized white ants, rats heavier than ten pounds—nearly ten different infected animal types.
Yan Yu stared at the charging swarm and shouted over the chaos, “Sister Tea! Why did so many mutated infected appear all at once?”
Jiang Tea Tea smashed a mutant rat with her flame staff. “That roar earlier—Reboot called them in!”
Sui Xuan Chu whirled, shocked. “Roommate… what do you mean?”
Yan Yu snapped, “Yeah—what do you mean?”
Jiang Tea Tea stomped a white ant flat. “I mean exactly what you think.”
Yan Yu and Sui Xuan Chu blurted at the same time, “Holy shit. That means she wasn’t version 3.0—she was 5.0.”
If one roar could summon infected, it was at least 5.0—maybe 6.0.
Too terrifying to think about.
Jiang Tea Tea laughed, eyes sharp. “Pray to Beast God there’s only one like her.”
“If there are more… then you’ve got a problem that’s almost impossible to solve.”
Yan Yu and Sui Xuan Chu went pale.
One was already captured and sent away. They could handle what was in front of them.
But if there were more—if it spread like a plague—Capital Planet could fall. Zhen Lin Empire could be crippled.
They couldn’t afford to imagine it.
Jiang Tea Tea raised her staff. “Enough. Focus. They’re in.”
“We’re switching to execution.”
The town still had survivors. They couldn’t just fire a missile and be done.
The squads had to search for uninfected, bind infected, and fight infected beasts at the same time. No matter how many troops or how skilled, there were always gaps.
Jiang Tea Tea saved multiple soldiers from being trampled beneath a four-horned beast’s feet.
And these infected beasts were like the living dead: unless reduced to dust, they wouldn’t stop. Cut in half, they kept twitching. Skull shattered, they still crawled. Limbs severed, they still dragged themselves toward living prey.
Jiang Tea Tea was a tree demon who could “eat anything,” but the sight and stink of so much rotten flesh and thick black blood was enough to make her gag. If she hadn’t sealed her sense of smell, she would’ve vomited on the spot.
Bodies were chopped apart. Heads were blown open. Limbs were hacked off.
The town reeked of blood.
To purge the air and prevent infected corpses from continuing to spread contamination, Jiang Tea Tea ignited the phoenix fire in her flame staff.
Five-colored flames roared up, devouring the torn remains.
As the town’s communications flickered back to life, an uninfected citizen—hiding in a high-rise, overlooked in the rescue—recorded the burning and posted it to Starnet.
The caption accused:
“Commander-in-Chief Chong Ming said the Crown Prince and Healer Jiang Tea Tea came to Ni Su Town to save us.”
“But what I see is Healer Jiang Tea Tea setting fires and burning the infected—and the uninfected.”
“Was Chong Ming lying? Were the Crown Prince and Healer Jiang only sent here so we’d obediently wait in place to be burned?”