Chapter Twenty-One: The Gluttonous Banquet

Every time Ellie fed, she didn’t gnaw the entire prey within her spiral maw; instead, she drew forth a crimson thread from her victim with formidable suction—a substance Fan Li interpreted as either life force or the very essence of the undead. He remembered vividly: when the girl zombie had once been devoured, her skin, once taut and fair, was left as blackened and withered as dead wood.

The Titan, just now drained, suffered the same fate. His massive frame of two and a half meters shrank and shriveled until he became a tiny, emaciated corpse lying unnoticed in the rain.

Fan Li knew well that under Ellie’s consumption, the Titan had lost his last spark of life, so he spared no further thought for him. Yet something strange was happening: the zombies who had cowered from the Titan’s brutality were now locked in a frenzied melee. Their cause? None other than the shriveled remains at the center of the chaos.

Where there had been merely dozens of zombies before, now over a hundred swarmed below. They clawed and tore at each other, each desperate to seize a share of the Titan’s body. The bloodthirsty undead had become utterly deranged, and the three closest to the Titan’s remains—a bloated brute, a stunted wretch, and a figure of alluring grace—displayed an uncanny, indescribable perversity in their actions. None could guess their former lives or professions, but their grotesque behavior now defied any mortal language.

The bloated one bit deep into the Titan’s skull—once impenetrable, now rendered soft and vulnerable after its vital essence had been drained. With a single savage snap, half the Titan’s head was devoured.

Another, a male, tore off an arm and retreated to feast upon it with relish. Beside him, a striking female zombie shimmered with jewels. She wore only a white skirt and a pair of floral sandals, revealing pale, slender toes like bamboo shoots, evoking a strange tenderness even in her monstrous state. Even as a zombie, her beauty persisted—one could scarcely imagine how dazzling she might have been in peaceful times.

But the apocalypse showed no mercy for beauty. She bore no wounds, marking her as an original carrier, one of the first infected. Her delicate hands, once untouched by hardship, now bulged with veins; her small, cherry lips, once reserved for tasting delicacies, were torn wide as she buried her head in the Titan’s abdomen, gnawing ravenously.

These three zombies dismantled over half the Titan’s corpse before the others, driven by madness, surged forward and pushed them aside, tearing at the scraps.

Only after a quarter of an hour did this grotesque feast end. The hundred-odd zombies, sated, once more wandered the street aimlessly. They cared nothing for the rain, ambling languidly along. Yet Fan Li knew that these seemingly sluggish zombies would, at the sight of a human, instantly transform into bloodthirsty fiends, descending again into frenzied savagery.

From his vantage at the window, Fan Li saw the full brutality of the carnage, his heart pounding so fiercely that the sound seemed to fill his chest. Even though he possessed a resistance to fear, the savage scene had shaken him to the core.

If the Titan had embodied the supremacy of raw power—shattering walls and cars with a single blow—then the zombies, in their mob frenzy, revealed the lawless dominance of a pack. When they gathered to feed, they were like hyenas on the hunt: barking, howling, sometimes low and guttural, sometimes shrill and hoarse—their voices mingled in a cacophony that summoned visions of the netherworld, chilling the soul.

It seemed the Titan’s corpse held a peculiar allure for them. Fan Li had previously witnessed a human beset by zombies while scavenging for food, but even then the undead retained a measure of restraint. Though frenzied, only those nearby joined in, while distant zombies loitered, waiting their turn.

But this time was different. The Titan’s remains had incited utter chaos—zombies from near and far converged, devouring greedily as though hoping to swallow the entire body whole.

Suddenly, a thought struck Fan Li: the Titan was clearly a more powerful mutant, a prodigy among the undead, his flesh perhaps akin to ginseng or snow lotus in its potency. Consuming his flesh might provoke unpredictable changes.

"Mutants..."

Could it be that these zombies, after consuming this flesh, would undergo some transformation and become mutants like the Titan?

No—the effect would be like a drop of ink in a glass of water: capable of coloring it, but diluted with each division into further glasses. Moreover, Ellie had already siphoned away nearly all the Titan’s life essence, reducing a two-and-a-half-meter giant into a withered husk. Whatever energy remained was scant indeed.

If his guess was correct, the Titan’s body was indeed fatally tempting to the zombies, but only if it still held sufficient energy could it awaken another mutant.

Fan Li had observed closely: the three zombies who had consumed the most flesh and blood from the Titan—two males and one female—stood apart from the rest.

Strangely, these three did not drift off like the others, but remained motionless, huddled together under the rain-heavy, cloud-darkened sky—like participants in some wicked ritual.

"Something’s off..."

When things stray from the norm, something sinister is afoot.

Fan Li took out his notebook, turned to a fresh page, and recorded their appearances in detail. Compared to the others who had only scavenged scraps, these three were undoubtedly the Titan’s true inheritors. If mutations were possible, they would be the prime candidates.

He set down his pen and massaged his brow, weary from witnessing so many startling scenes in quick succession.

"I hope I’m overthinking this..."

He murmured to himself, the sparse patter of rain swallowing his words. Alone in the room, all was deathly silent once more.