"Oh shit, are we really about to watch a chicken win ten straight matches today?" The shout echoes through the packed tiers of the arena. "The black market is out of stronger pets already!" As the crowd shouted and jeered, the match was once again put on hold. To her surprise, Jing Shu was actually invited to the top floor of the arena; the so-called nobles' section that most people could only dream of entering.
She couldn't help feeling wary. Were they planning to silence her because they didn't have any pets left to send out? She had read up on the previous ten-win streaks before. None of them ended cleanly. But this time was different. She had bet two thousand black market coins right from the start on Xiao Dou winning the ten-match championship. Instead of placing bets round by round, she had gone for a single, high-stakes wager. It was basically an all-in lottery ticket, and she was aiming for the jackpot.
The problem was the odds. If the ratio had been one to one, it wouldn't matter much, but the payout was massive. If Jing Shu actually pulled off the win, the black market would bleed hard. Money usually only flowed into the black market; it didn't flow out. Nobody liked losing their own pile.
The path from the slums to the nobles' floor amazed her. From the arena floor, it looked like the top and bottom levels were connected, but in reality, there were no direct passages. To reach the upper floors, one had to take a long detour through multiple security checks. Weapons were strictly forbidden. Everyone had to pass through a laser barrier. The thin, humming lines of blue light cast a clinical glow over the hallway. They said the barrier was a last line of defense against riots. Once activated, it could slice a person into bloody chunks in an instant. This was Jing Shu's first time seeing this kind of American high-tech weaponry.
So Yang Yang's plan had been right after all. If they had tried to storm the place, they would never have made it past the noble zone, much less smuggled out supplies. Carefully, Jing Shu passed through the laser zone and was escorted into the second floor of the nobles' section overlooking the arena. She didn't even have time to take in the lavish scenery before the sound of polite applause filled the air.
The room smelled strange, a cloying mix of expensive perfume and aged wine. On a plush velvet couch sat a blonde, blue-eyed woman with flushed cheeks. She was lounging lazily in a man's arms. The man was massaging her like an obedient servant, his fingers moving rhythmically. So this was Peggy; the one who had sent them the mission.
"Ten times leverage means you have already made tens of thousands of black market coins. Time to quit while you have the chance." Peggy said it in fluent Chinese. Jing Shu's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"
"You won't win the tenth match."
"How would you know if we don't try?"
"Fine then, Miss Mirror," Peggy said, her lips curving into a seductive smile. "Stay here and witness it with us."
Jing Shu couldn't read her intentions, but she had no idea that Peggy was simply trying to keep her away from Xiao Dou. She wanted to ensure Jing Shu couldn't use any more of her weird witchcraft. Those Chinese curses were seriously terrifying. So what would the black market send out for the tenth round? The answer came soon enough. Half an hour later, the sound of heavy engines echoed through the stone tunnels. Everyone turned their heads as armored trucks rolled in, hauling a massive, rusted cage. The black market did have a hidden trump card after all.
"It's coming, it's coming!" The crowd grew louder as the cage doors opened with a metallic groan. "That looks like a hippo, right? But what is with all that sloughing, rotting flesh?"
"Wait, that's a zombie hippo! It wiped out three entire teams a few days ago before an Asian squad finally dragged it back. Guns don't even faze it; not even machine guns. It regenerates too! Even if you blow the hippo's head off, the damn thing keeps moving!"
"Holy shit, that's insane. So this undead beast is the black market's ultimate trump card! That chicken is done for. Its only trick is that anesthetic spit, but that won't work on something like this. Hell, even poison won't! No way would the black market let an Asian outsider walk away with the ten-match jackpot."
The creature clearly had no consciousness left. The moment it was released into the cage, it started searching for food. It really was terrifying. It was thick-skinned, slow, but practically invincible. None of the previous beasts could even scratch the grey, sagging hide. Crocodiles, pythons, whatever; none of them would ever pick a fight with something the size of a truck, especially one that fed on rotten meat. In the apocalypse, these Darklife creatures had no natural predators left. When they were starving, they would even eat their own kind.
Peggy smirked when she saw Jing Shu's stunned expression. "It isn't too late to regret your decision. No matter what happens, the black market won't lose. So, what now? What is your little hen, or your so-called witchcraft, going to do this time?"
A chicken versus an undead hippo; what kind of odds were those? The tenth match instantly reignited the entire arena. Even people who had sworn off betting after the last round were rushing to place wagers now. Who would turn down free money? That was the general mood.
Jing Shu didn't answer. She simply smiled, though her eyes remained cold. This thing wasn't like anything else. Unless she chopped the hippo into tiny pieces, there wasn't much she could do. Undead creatures were straight-up nightmares. They were immune to bullets and immune to pain. They were made of billions of independent bacteria packed inside a hippo's massive frame. How the hell was anyone supposed to kill that?
The match began. So, a chicken with no weapons, no grenades, and spit that didn't work anymore; how could she possibly take down a multi-ton zombie hippo?
The hippo, its flesh dripping and rancid, only had one instinct left: eat. It would devour anything it could fit in its wide mouth. It had no fear, no pain, and no emotion. The moment it entered the arena, it started licking up the leftover scraps of previous kills on the ground. It snorted as it ate.
Feeling any regrets? Peggy asked. She was sipping a bright red drink, letting out a satisfied moan. "It's useless," Peggy said lazily. "Let's see what kind of witchcraft she has got this time. We have tested those things for days. We even extracted key genes from them. They're like bottomless pits. Once they run out of food, they go berserk."
Sure enough, after licking the last of the scraps from the dirt, the hippo turned and charged straight for Xiao Dou. The hen flapped her wings and dodged the impact, leaping onto the iron bars of the cage. But she couldn't just stay up there forever. It really looked hopeless. If she had grenades, she could have at least blown the thing apart. But now? What could a chicken do on her own?
Then Jing Shu smiled again. It was a slow, eerie movement of her lips. She gave her final command. "Either you eat it, or it eats you. Your choice."