Chapter Thirteen: Mutation!

A soft, echoing sound broke the silence.

In the pitch-black night, Fan Li walked through the corridor. Apart from the wailing that drifted in from the street outside, only the sound of his own footsteps filled the building. It was the dead of night.

Fan Li held a katana in his hand, emerging from a room where a corpse lay, before slowly making his way upstairs. If it hadn't taken two heavy swings of the hammer to knock down the man of the house, Fan Li might have started to doubt himself—wondering if he was turning into some sort of deranged criminal.

As he ascended, thoughts churned silently in his mind. The building had six floors in total; his own apartment was on the third. The fourth floor was home to a family of zombies and a slightly overweight man. That meant he had already cleared out two empty floors.

Now, Fan Li was heading toward the fifth floor.

Again, two apartments shared the landing. Unit 501 had a recently installed iron security door, while 502 still had its original wooden door from the time of construction. Fan Li approached the iron door and knocked.

A series of sharp barks rang out—not from inside the security door, but from the wooden door behind him. Fan Li recalled the dog kept by the upstairs neighbor: a man in his thirties, divorced, whose drinking and gambling had driven his family away. For company, the man kept a golden retriever. Fan Li had seen them a few times—he never used a leash, but the golden retriever was gentle and had never bitten a child or a puppy.

Ignoring the barking behind him, Fan Li continued to knock and called out, "Is anyone there?"

No matter how loudly he called, there was no response from inside. Instead, the barking behind him grew more frantic, accompanied by the sound of wild, desperate thudding against the door.

Something wasn’t right.

After confirming that no one was inside the security door—or perhaps the resident simply dared not answer a stranger in the middle of the night—Fan Li turned to gaze at the wooden door behind him.

Golden retrievers are among the gentlest of large-breed dogs, ranking high in canine intelligence. By nature, they are mild-tempered. Fan Li had seen this one enough to know it never snapped at anyone, always wagging its tail in a plea for affection, even without a leash.

But now the barking from inside was shrill and piercing, the dog slamming again and again into the door.

The old apartment doors were flimsy; dust drifted from the wall with each violent impact. Normally, the man inside would have shouted at the dog to quiet down, but there was only silence from within—only the dog's howls echoed through the hallway in the darkness.

Dogs are fed on a schedule; no one leaves out days' worth of food and water at once. Six days had passed since the world ended. Without food or water, a dog couldn't survive that long.

So how had this one managed to stay alive?

A chill ran down Fan Li’s spine. There might be no food or water left in the apartment—but there was always the companion who lived with it: its owner.

One cannot judge a dog with human standards.

Yes, most golden retrievers are gentle, but there are always exceptions—just as there are criminals hidden within society. Most people are decent, but there are always a few with twisted natures, waiting for the chance to reveal their darkness.

Humans might commit crimes for money, desire, power, or some other motive. But a dog is still a dog. Tamed for thousands of years, its ancestry as a beast, a wolf, cannot be denied.

Even humans show atavistic traits—how much more so a creature with wild blood?

What was stranger still was that Fan Li hadn’t heard this dog bark once during the past few days. Only when he knocked on the neighbor's door tonight did the golden retriever erupt into a frenzy.

Fan Li could now make a reasonable guess: either the golden retriever, driven mad by hunger, had killed and eaten its owner, surviving on the flesh; or it had mutated into a zombie dog.

If it was the latter, things would become much more complicated.

Fan Li was no novice. Having fought zombies twice already, he had a fair sense of their capabilities. Ordinary humans, after mutation, lost intelligence and awareness but gained formidable strength and vitality. And if the one mutating was a dog...

A golden retriever may be mild by nature, but the explosive power of an adult dog far surpasses that of a human; its speed and bite force are beyond comparison.

Should he open the door?

Fan Li hesitated. With four apartments already dealt with, only nine units remained in the entire building. Abandoning this one would mean losing access to more supplies.

Using a hammer as a weapon might be too risky at close range, but he had just acquired a katana downstairs—eighty centimeters of steel. Perhaps... it was worth a try.

In this world, hesitation could be fatal. After a few seconds of deliberation, a grim determination settled over Fan Li’s features. He fell silent, eyes fixed straight ahead, motionless as a statue.

One second, two seconds... Five minutes passed. The barking inside had ceased a minute earlier.

Perhaps the dog had decided the intruder had left, and the hallway returned to a deathly silence.

Another minute slipped by.

Suddenly, Fan Li drew a deep breath, strode forward, and with all his strength, kicked in the wooden door.

Having done this once before, he was prepared for what he saw. The door collapsed instantly, and with his night-adapted vision, Fan Li took in the bloody scene within.

Blood and torn limbs were scattered everywhere. Shreds of human clothing lay strewn about. In the center of the room stood a figure, drenched in blood, its mouth and nose deformed, teeth bared, eyes glowing crimson. It stared straight at him.

Fan Li had guessed right. The once gentle golden retriever had mutated after all.