Following his mutation, Bai Xiaofei possessed incredible speed, but he quickly lost his bearings and began charging around blindly like a headless fly.
"Ha-ha!" Not far away, Lin Xia watched this spectacle and burst into laughter.
Suffering from the side effects of the stimulant and desperately needing to cool down, Bai Xiaofei finally burst into the Huichuntang traditional medicine shop to seek relief.
Just as he was preparing to leave, female police officer Xiaohui and a male civilian outside mistook the shop for a place harboring a Corpse Brother and opened fire.
After revealing his identity, Bai Xiaofei helped Xiaohui apply medicine to the injured man.
When Bai Xiaofei announced he was going to find the military, Xiaohui told him it was too late to reach any evacuation point.
Watching from the sidelines, Lin Xia sighed over Bai Xiaofei's plight... before turning her appreciation to Xiaohui. "Fair-skinned, beautiful, with a great bust and long legs..."
Learning that the military had completely retreated, Bai Xiaofei nearly flew into a rage, cursing the armed forces bitterly.
Xiaohui hurriedly explained that the military had no choice but to fall back, and that special forces were now handling the clearance of Corpse Brothers within the infected zone.
Seeing Bai Xiaofei turn his anger on the police, Xiaohui felt deeply aggrieved and began to cry as she recounted the sacrifice of her colleagues and soldiers at the anime convention.
Realizing how extreme he had been, Bai Xiaofei thought of the squad leader who had fought the Centipede Corpse Brother... and offered a sincere apology before asking for the location of the nearest military defense line.
Xiaohui explained in detail, but Bai Xiaofei had no sense of direction.
Anxious to the point of coughing up blood once more, Bai Xiaofei shocked Xiaohui when she learned he had been injected with a military stimulant and that his antidote was ruined. She immediately decided to take him to find the military.
Overjoyed, Bai Xiaofei declared that with the stimulant in his system, he could defeat any Corpse Brother.
Just as they were about to set out, a Poké Ball rolled past, and Xiaohui recognized it as belonging to one of the anime convention Corpse Brothers.
Bai Xiaofei told her to hide inside while he brandished his blade and strode toward the entrance.
Outside the Huichuntang shop, Bai Xiaofei encountered the Pikachu Corpse Brother—small in stature, but blindingly fast.
After exchanging blows, Bai Xiaofei realized its attack power was weak, but its durability and damage resistance were exceptional.
Hitting the Pikachu Corpse Brother with a Poké Ball, Bai Xiaofei prepared to press the attack when the rest of the convention Corpse Brothers appeared.
Among them were Hatsune Miku, Black Cat Detective, Ultraman, the Calabash Brothers, and Monkey D. Luffy from One Piece.
An Ultraman Corpse Brother nearly bit a male tourist, failing only because the man was wearing a helmet. However, the Hatsune Miku Corpse Brother killed the tourist with a sweep of her leek.
Bai Xiaofei forced the Pikachu Corpse Brother back, hoisted Xiaohui onto his shoulder, and fled.
Xiaohui directed Bai Xiaofei through parks, alleyways, and shopping plazas. Just as they were about to reach the military defense line, the Pikachu Corpse Brother caught up to them.
Though its offensive power was low, its relentless harassment meant Bai Xiaofei wouldn't make it to the military lines within fifty minutes.
Pikachu kept pestering them, and Xiaohui's attempts to pelt it with debris proved useless.
Bai Xiaofei considered shedding his clothes, using bricks, or deploying his titanium alloy blade to deal with the creature.
Finally, he snapped the head of an iron spear and stabbed it into the Pikachu Corpse Brother, successfully slowing it down.
Yet the creature bounded onto a rooftop to lie in wait, prompting Bai Xiaofei to resolve to fight it head-on.
At that moment, a bolt of lightning struck the Pikachu Corpse Brother, reducing it to charcoal.
Bai Xiaofei resumed running but suddenly collapsed, and Xiaohui rushed to help him up.
The stimulant's side effects struck with a vengeance: his body burned with intense heat, and he coughed up blood. Xiaohui had no idea what to do.
As his consciousness began to blur, Bai Xiaofei knew that failing to inject the antidote in time, combined with intense physical exertion, had triggered the side effects prematurely.
He used a revolving door to block the pursuing Calabash Brother Corpse Brother.
Xiaohui dragged Bai Xiaofei into the hotel, hoisted him onto a luggage cart, and wheeled him down to the basement cold storage.
The Calabash Brother Corpse Brother crashed fruitlessly against the glass curtain wall, looking rather comical.
As it turned out, Xiaohui knew this particular Calabash Brother Corpse Brother was a total pervert.
In life, it had secretly photographed girls' skirts—even hers—so she had dragged it down to the precinct and disciplined it with an electric baton.
Guessing that it was chasing them out of lingering resentment from that beating and posed little real threat, she paid it no further mind.
Shivering as she entered the cold store, Xiaohui set the titanium alloy blade aside.
Noticing Bai Xiaofei's body temperature dropping and his symptoms easing, she prepared to leave, only to find the cold storage door locked electronically from the outside.
Her attempts to open it failed. When she spotted the temperature control box and raised the heat, Bai Xiaofei was put in danger, so she quickly dropped it back down to a low temperature.
Freezing bitterly, Xiaohui finally lay down beside Bai Xiaofei to share his body heat, only to develop a fever and drift off to sleep.
Bai Xiaofei woke up to find himself in the cold storage, cradled in the arms of the female police officer, Xiaohui.
Recalling the events, he realized Xiaohui had saved his life.
Noticing that Xiaohui had a fever, Bai Xiaofei prepared to carry her out of the cold storage, but the door wouldn't budge. He used the titanium alloy blade to carve a hole through the wall and climbed out to the hotel's top-floor presidential suite.
Bai Xiaofei wanted to cover Xiaohui with a blanket, but when he realized her clothes were soaked and he needed to strip them off, he hesitated, his face flushing crimson.
Still, he forced away his awkwardness—they had survived worse, so why worry about this?—and helped peel the wet garments away.
Yet Xiaohui's complexion only grew worse.
Panicked at the sight of the frail Xiaohui, Bai Xiaofei suddenly spotted a sauna in the master bathroom, as if beholding a ray of hope.
He carefully lifted the blanket, scooped Xiaohui up into his arms, muttered "must not look, must not touch" under his breath, and carried her into the sauna.
The room was filled with the fragrance of wood. Bai Xiaofei laid Xiaohui down on the wooden bench, tucked a pure-wool blanket around her, and pressed the sauna switch.
High-temperature steam quickly filled the room, enveloping Xiaohui until she looked as though she were resting in a mystical world of clouds and mist.
Bai Xiaofei paced anxiously outside the sauna, consumed by worry and anticipation.
Half an hour later, he turned off the steam and stepped inside.
Xiaohui looked like a freshly boiled red prawn, her entire body flushed crimson with her short, damp hair plastered against her forehead.
Sweat continued to bead and slide down her skin, but her spirit was much improved; she had stopped babbling deliriously, and her breathing had grown steady.
Taking a large bath towel, Bai Xiaofei gently wiped Xiaohui's body, moving from her forehead to her cheeks, neck, and arms.
After carefully drying every inch of skin (cough, cough) and clumsily, awkwardly, and unnaturally helping her back into her underwear,
he gathered her up, carried her back to the bed, and replaced the soaked sheets and blankets.
Only when he saw that Xiaohui's breathing was even and her fever had broken did Bai Xiaofei finally let out a sigh of relief.
Standing before the panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows, he reflected on how wealth and poverty stood equal before the Corpse Brother Virus.
All of City H hovered on the brink of destruction as the virus tore brutally through the world.
Bai Xiaofei felt a formidable power surging within him; he no longer wished to return to his old, mediocre life.
He wanted to use this strength to protect Xiaowei and everyone dear to him.
Ever since he stepped out of his run-down apartment building, he had faced one Corpse Brother after another, his courage steadily draining away until the stimulant finally granted him the strength to fight back.
He guessed that Xiaowei might already be infected with the virus, meaning a brutal battle awaited him when he found her. He had to become stronger.
Bai Xiaofei knew he still had a very long road ahead of him.
Meanwhile, shortly after Xiaohui dragged Bai Xiaofei into the hotel,
Lin Xia finally decided to make her move. She had sensed that several of the Corpse Brothers in this horde were not quite right.
She could feel the presence of Human Stage Peak and even Earth Stage Early Stage Corpse Brothers.
One of them was a Uzumaki Naruto Corpse Brother, which Lin Xia guessed was a wind-style ninja from Dongying.
He must have been sent to investigate City H or perhaps steal corpses, only to crash and burn here, retaining the faint power of the Earth Stage Early Stage.
It seemed her arrival had triggered a certain butterfly effect. But once dealt with, wouldn't everything be fine?