Survival by Cutting Off the Tail

“Do you know the term ‘shedding the tail to survive’?”

Ren Anhua asked, looking sincerely at Tang Yunxuan.

Her cross-star pupils looked very cute, but Tang Yunxuan only felt a chill run down his spine at this moment.

“Wait, what are you trying to do!”

Most of Tang Yunxuan’s body had sunk into the Zombie Broodmother, but more than that, he was concerned about the pink-haired girl drawing her blade before him.

“When geckos are bitten on the tail by predators or encounter danger, they often shed their tails to attract the enemy’s attention, seize the opportunity to escape, and thus survive,” Ren Anhua said, raising the watermelon knife that had accompanied her for so long, roughly finding an angle.

“Stick your head over here and try to stretch your neck out as much as possible.”

“Is there no other way?”

Tang Yunxuan was almost crying.

“Really, I—”

A strange sound came from Tang Yunxuan as his neck was instantly severed.

After happily claiming the head of a male high school student, Ren Anhua quickly retreated.

The frantically fluctuating white light rapidly regenerated a body for this head in less than a second.

Tossing the stark-naked ordinary male high school student into the truck bed, Ren Anhua quickly jumped up herself.

“Shi Mu, accelerate! Shake off this damn thing!”

Although the Zombie Broodmother was difficult to kill due to its rule-breaking volume and regenerative abilities, it had a fatal flaw: it couldn’t run fast enough.

A human car could easily get rid of this sluggish behemoth.

As long as you weren’t driving an Alfa Romeo Giulia, you weren’t in too much danger.

It had been three days since they left Pu Town.

To avoid the military outposts, Ren Anhua’s group had been darting through extremely dangerous areas.

At first, it wasn’t too much of a problem.

They had solid combat strength, were accompanied by three rare advanced healers, and one of them was Ren Anhua, so they basically wouldn’t encounter any danger.

But you can’t walk along the river without getting your shoes wet, and this time they all got their shoes wet.

No one had expected that this Zombie Broodmother could actually fall from the sky; unavoidable couldn’t describe this situation.

It was simply a bolt from the blue.

Tang Yunxuan, that unlucky kid, was standing the closest and was directly grabbed and dragged in by the outstretched limbs.

Fortunately, Ren Anhua gave him a “gecko’s tail-shed.”

She hadn’t tried using Aberrant Healing, but that would just be feeding the beast.

The Zombie Broodmother had no organs; it was simply a come-what-may self-propelled organic matter absorber, a flesh-grown devouring behemoth.

It was fundamentally different from ordinary zombies.

Shen Dinghui’s scaling ability also couldn’t effectively kill it.

Scaling had its limits.

She could now only scale materials within one ton, which had no real damage to the Zombie Broodmother.

Ren Anhua couldn’t imagine how to kill such a troublesome thing.

Probably only that monster in a suit and the military’s light-type Awakened could take down a being of this level.

Even the original RV team would only run if they encountered this thing.

So Ren Anhua made the same rational decision this time.

They sped away at full speed, bursting out of this dangerous zombie-infested county.

Tang Yunxuan’s face was ashen.

In this cold season, he now had to request Liu Shi’s cross-dressing assistance again.

Ren Anhua’s move had directly ruined his last set of clothes.

“Don’t be so sad. You look pretty good in women’s clothes. It’s not bad to keep long hair either. I’ll braid it for you.”

Liu Shi looked at Tang Yunxuan with interest.

Perhaps this immature high school student with a beardless face was a pretty good practice dummy for her.

Ren Anhua looked at Tang Yunxuan.

She hadn’t paid much attention before, but this kid was actually decent-looking, with fair skin and soft features.

Because he was too lazy to cut his hair in the apocalypse, where there were no hairdressing services, his hair was now somewhat long, which meant that he looked quite presentable when he wore women’s clothes.

Of course, he definitely wasn’t as good-looking as she, Ren Anhua, was.

“No! Stop, you!”

Tang Yunxuan nimbly jumped away from Liu Shi’s attack range.

This big sister was good in every way, but her ability to take action was too strong.

Tang Yunxuan pulled off the hair tie on his head, re-opening his hair.

However, even so, he still felt something was wrong.

In the end, the length of the hair was the most fundamental problem, but if he cut it himself, it would be ugly, so he just left it as it was.

For some reason, he secretly glanced at Ren Anhua, seemingly seeking a trace of recognition and peace of mind from this pink-haired person.

This simple teenager still thought that Ren Anhua was a cross-dresser, even though this cross-dresser had shared a bed with the girls on the team several times.

Little did he know that Ren Anhua had been turned into a two-legged moe girl long before meeting him.

However, this didn’t prevent him from finding comfort in her person.

Perhaps due to this sense of comfort, Tang Yunxuan might go even further down the path of cross-dressing.

After all, with a strong activist like Liu Shi on the team, as long as Tang Yunxuan didn’t mind, Liu Shi could put together more than a dozen outfits for him.

Of course, Ren Anhua wasn’t particularly concerned about Tang Yunxuan’s experience.

In her mind, cross-dressing wasn’t that unacceptable.

Wearing a sukumizu that couldn’t be taken off, she would be punishing herself if she were too resistant.

The group drove onto a sparsely populated highway and started lunch in a place where there were no villages in sight.

Due to the military blockade, the towns and counties they passed through were all dangerous areas with a zombie outbreak.

Although they couldn’t compare to the city center, they often fell into sieges.

If it weren’t for Ren Anhua, probably only Shi Mu would still be alive on the team.

Of course, traversing such areas wasn’t without respite.

Whenever they traveled to these godforsaken, uninhabited areas, it was their most relaxed time, and only then could they have time to eat.

Of course, this also meant that they couldn’t find supplies now.

The areas rich in resources along the way were all occupied by zombies.

Although Ren Anhua wasn’t afraid, lingering for too long would inevitably lead to team members having their limbs torn off by the zombie horde.

Even if Ren Anhua could use regeneration to restore them, that experience wasn’t something they could easily get used to.

So Tang Yunxuan would have to wear women’s clothing for quite a while, and not only that, but the food supply also began to become difficult.

Their food reserves were originally very sufficient, and the preventive measures were done very well, but an accidental rollover zeroed out all these preparations.

Ren Anhua and Shi Mu’s pickup truck was overturned by a strength-specialized third-tier zombie in a surprise zombie horde attack.

Although Ren Anhua quickly killed the third-tier zombie and Shi Mu quickly flipped the pickup back over, the food scattered all over the ground was too trampled by the zombie horde to be eaten.

There were many people in Chen Shu’s car, and only Liu Weimin in his car, but perhaps because this person used too much poison, he didn’t put much food in his car, mostly gasoline.

So Ren Anhua’s pickup was the team’s main granary.

This rollover instantly turned their lives from wealthy tycoons to tight-fisted paupers.

Of course, this didn’t include Ren Anhua, a person who could live normally on one meal every three days basically said goodbye to the trouble of food.

This was the most valuable function of this outfit.

A big part of the reason Ren Anhua was willing to let this thing wrap around her was this.

Of course, if they really encountered extreme situations, her ability wasn’t incapable of helping her solve the food problem.

Of course, unless necessary, she didn’t want to go that far.

Comfortably lying in the car, with no hunger, Ren Anhua looked at the map.

After three days of driving, she was very close to Su City.

Ren Anhua estimated that they could reach that lawless land after traversing two more small counties.

They had passed through the military’s densely populated area, but Ren Anhua wasn’t completely relieved.

She estimated that they would probably encounter the military’s people soon.

Zhao Sanyan had defected; it was impossible for the military not to know after three days.

Such dense outposts hadn’t stopped her.

If they still didn’t know what had happened, then they would be too dull.

Ren Anhua wouldn’t underestimate the military.

Wan Xingbang’s report and Lin Aijing’s identity as a sleeper had left a deep impression on her.

They would never let her escape so easily.

“Uh, is this all there is? I’ve had compressed biscuits for five meals in a row.”

Tang Yunxuan felt like he was about to vomit from this stuff.

He now envied Ren Anhua to no end.

Not having to face hunger was such a big advantage in this apocalypse.

But he also knew that he couldn’t envy this; after all, he didn’t have an ability like Ren Anhua’s.

Ren Anhua’s explanation to them was that her regenerative ability could, to some extent, compensate for the need for food.

Ren Anhua was too embarrassed to tell them the details of the sukumizu.

“If you want to eat meat, that’s fine too. There are six of you; you can even change flavors one per day for six days,” Ren Anhua said, lying on the roof of the car and enjoying the warm winter sun while looking at the map.

“Tsk, it’s really a pity just now. Your body actually had a lot of meat. I should have dragged some out for you; tearing off an arm would have been enough for a meal.”

Tang Yunxuan’s face turned pale.

“I think I’ll stick to the compressed biscuits, actually, they taste just fine.”

Although she was joking with Tang Yunxuan, Ren Anhua suddenly gained some inspiration from the earlier “shedding the tail to survive.”

What if she had been trapped earlier?

What if no one had come to help her “shed her tail”?

Being trapped could be said to be the only flaw in her ability.

Ren Anhua wasn’t afraid of being killed, because she couldn’t even kill herself.

There was nothing to worry about, but being trapped was different.

If it were before, she would have directly released high temperatures if she were trapped.

Iron turned to red water, soil turned to magma, wood turned to ashes; nothing could trap her.

But now it was different.

If she was only trapped without being harmed, then she was just a slightly stronger human.

Just take the earlier Zombie Broodmother as an example.

That kind of mobile organic swamp, if Ren Anhua had accidentally fallen into it, she would probably have been dragged into the depths.

Although she could temporarily rely on regeneration to not die, that would only provide a large amount of food for the broodmother.

After the energy flow was exhausted, she could only die inside.

Moreover, she might experience a fate worse than death before dying—who knew what was inside the broodmother.

She currently had no useful escape methods, but if she could cut off her own neck, it would be different.

It meant she could change bodies at any time to complete a must-die escape, and maybe even create some unexpected miracles occasionally.

But how could she cut off her own neck?

If she was trapped, she couldn’t rule out the possibility of not being able to use her hands.

Perhaps, she should wear a self-retracting steel wire or something around her neck?

Since getting this healing ability, Ren Anhua’s brain often became very cruel.

After all, people who couldn’t die liked to be reckless.