Jin stumbled with uncoordinated feet as he appeared in what looked to be the prison cells of the army encampment, which he had recently visited again to look at the zombies. The creatures had been recently cleared for sparring again after the convicts that General Shroud had been talking about had arrived from the 'Bloody Pit.'

It had been interesting to see how the criminals fought since, unlike the army, they mostly didn't have systemic training.

"You brought the boy?" the unassuming assistant/scribe of General Shroud asked, seemingly more perturbed by that than the man himself.

There was also the older woman wearing light green robes standing around awkwardly, likely because of how she had behaved a week ago when Jin had incapacitated one of her bitten healers.

The disciple decided to stay quiet in the space where everyone but the prisoners outranked him and simply bowed to each person present in order of rank. First the general, then his assistant, then the healer.

It was the simple gesture that made the healer once again bristle, likely because she perceived herself as having a higher status than the scribe. How was Jin supposed to have known this? No idea.

"Considering his astute observational skills, that might not have been that bad of a decision. Intelligence does not discriminate between cultivation levels, and the only thing that truly tends to change is the level of general knowledge," the general interjected, subtly justifying Elder Flower's decision. "And considering that the situation we are facing is completely novel…" he trailed off.

"We have experts analysing the situation now," the woman complained quietly but went ignored.

"Inner disciple Jin was just in the process of telling me something interesting when we received your message. That's why I brought him," Elder Flower said before turning to the aforementioned disciple. "Repeat it," she ordered.

Jin awkwardly scratched the back of his head as he looked around the long corridor of cells, which radiated some sort of iron qi that he hadn't felt before. There were rows of cells at the front and behind him, leading into what seemed like infinity, putting into question really how many prisoners an army was supposed to hold. The prison cells were made out of bamboo which was covered in a variety of sigils. He couldn't read them, maybe making out a fifth of the meaning, but at least he felt reassured by the fact that the prisoners were being held back by something stronger than bamboo.

He looked to the left and the right, saw that the cells were filled with zombies who must have been the initial soldiers who had been sparring. The convicts were designated by the shabby black robe he already knew and a few soldiers were probably sitting off lighter sentences for petty army misdemeanours.

Some of the convicts were opening their mouths at him and grabbing at the bamboo sticks which were set too closely together for them to wiggle out of their cells. It was quite obvious that they were screaming, but disconcertedly enough, no noise escaped their mouths. He could easily tell what they were saying from the panicked looks in their frantically swivelling eyes. 'Please have mercy, don't make me do this,' they said.

"Repeat what?" he asked, having forgotten as he'd spaced out. This place gave him bad vibes.

"You were suspicious about a possible mutation occurring in the zombies," Elder Flower grumbled with a sigh as if at a loss for what to do with him.

Jin crossed his arms. He'd just been bullshitting to justify a bigger variety of enemies. Would everything he said come to bite him in the ass? he wondered.

"Well," he started. "Going by the fact that the zombification process is transmitted through scratching and biting, I was thinking about it as if it were a disease or infection transmitted through physical contact that breaks the skin?" he asked into the room.

The general nodded, "your thoughts were correct. Unfortunately, the swarm of yet unidentified microorganisms controlling the bodies is proving very resistant to removal. The great sage doctor Len has managed a purification, but that simply left behind a corpse. He was unable to repeat the feat with a recently infected criminal because there were not yet enough microorganisms present to reliably separate them by any identification method known to us."

Jin nodded thoughtfully. "Then my classification of this being some sort of disease was correct," he determined. "The thing with diseases is that the longer you leave one untreated, the worse the symptoms will get. If we consider thus the first form of the zombies as the initial symptom, then it would make sense that the form, or expression, would change as the disease progresses. We can assume that the longer we leave them without a cure, the more the situation will worsen. Perhaps specifically worsen in the direction that the zombie will become more efficient at infecting others. Technically, there must be some qi or biological process to upkeep the reanimation part of the process, which also prevents the necrosis of tissue, which would at some points leave the disease with a useless skeleton."

"No qi, at least not in the active sense" the scribe muttered quietly. "It's why we've been having such issues. Trivial mortal sicknesses and qi infections are things that we can easily treat. This is something more complex."

Jin nodded thoughtfully. "Well, in that case, the disease must be consuming the flesh of its host at some rate, no matter how efficient, to generate the movement. Unless it can get its energy from another source?" he wondered aloud before shaking his head. "I'll simply go with the assumption that that's not the case. This means, however, that with the progression of the disease, certain changes might be made to the host. Either it loses some abilities or gains new ones as the internal decomposition can lead to a different bodily structure than necessary for normal human life. In my opinion, it is possible that the zombies might lose certain abilities, forcing the disease to mutate to continue infecting humans by granting it new ways of doing so or simply improving the construct with no backlash with time," Jin explained.

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General Shroud and the healer shared a look. "Similar to what we thought and what the medical and flesh-grafting team have discovered," the scribe said with a note of surprise in his voice. "It was a bit naive to believe that what we're dealing with was so simplistic as to be surface level. Out of curiosity, what do you think is the worst mutation that the disease could develop?" he asked.

"Well, diseases, like anything, simply want to spread. Infect new hosts. It's their biological prerogative one could say. Things that don't spread after all don't exist anymore after a certain time," Jin muttered thoughtfully. "Currently, the disease is transmitted by breaking the skin in some form. If the zombies were to suddenly become incapable of movement due to advanced consumption of biomaterial, then the disease might undergo a series of mutations in an attempt to continue infecting people despite the low mobility. The scariest mutation it could come up with would be an air-transmitted infection. That, in my opinion, would be the worst-case scenario as then the infection would spread through random gusts of wind and whatnot, and we wouldn't perhaps even be able to tell how long it takes for it to completely dissipate from an area."

"Currently, the infected tissue cannot remain infectious for more than a few minutes after being removed from the host," the healer muttered.

Jin refrained from asking how they'd found that out. He inadvertently glanced at one of the prisoners from the Bloody Pit and his mind supplied him the answer regardless.

"Well, thankfully, it hasn't come to the point where the zombies can take advantage of that short window," General Shroud said. "All this talk of possible mutations, however, perhaps you should have a look at what actually happened," he said, stepping aside to show that he had been standing in front of a cell containing a single zombie. The general then slapped one of the bamboo poles, which suddenly caused the group to be able to hear what was occurring within the dark cell.

"Click, click, click, click," came from within in a low guttural voice in irregular intervals.

Elder Flower stepped forward, Jin following closely behind as he wondered if he was truly going to be so lucky.

What came into view once he came closer and his eyes got used to the light, or rather the lack thereof, was a zombie that had changed only slightly from its previous form. Firstly there were weird fleshy growths around its ear, secondly, the eyes had rotted away leaving behind empty holes congealed with solidified pus. Not the fun kind of pus either.

"Of course," Jin muttered, remembering something that a biologist friend of his had once told him.

"What do you mean?" Elder Flower asked sharply from his side while curiously tilting her head.

Jin coughed awkwardly into a fist as he wondered how to communicate this information. The thing about eyes was that they were immune privileged, which meant that they did not have a regular immune response to infections but had to be treated as a separate biological category from the rest of the body. The only other normal part of the human body which was immune privileged was the anterior part of the brain. Thinking about the zombie virus as a disease that parasitically took over the host's body to infect others while killing it meant that from that point onwards, the virus was responsible for upkeeping the body's functionality to fulfil its purpose. However, considering that eyes were of a different category, it could be that it was a part that the virus had no real control over due to the lack of an immune system to subvert. It would then technically make sense that a virus or an infection would struggle to keep that part of the body in particular in functioning order.

"The eyes are separate from the normal biological system from my understanding. They react to infections differently than the rest. It would make sense, then, that if we look at the zombie virus as a disease that, in the sense of upkeeping normal function, it might struggle with that particular area. Considering humans are visual creatures, it would need a replacement sensory function after the loss."

"If you know that then you surely know which other parts of the body also react differently to infections," the green-robed woman said suspiciously.

Jin nodded idly. "The brain and, I believe, the foetus and the surrounding organs when a woman is pregnant."

The woman looked at him with cold eyes for a few seconds before eventually nodding and taking a step back.

"It developed these growths in the ear to determine its targets because it lost its eyes. Can it locate things?" Jin asked.

"Quite well, in fact," the scribe replied.

"Echolocation then, it explains the clicks," Jin muttered.

"Eerily similar to bats, yes," the man said.

"Fuck," Jin sighed. "Either the virus is programmed to continue being dangerous no matter the state of the corpse that it is currently inhabiting, or it's so highly adaptable that it finds solutions to its problems as they come about. Is this mutation the only one, or are others turning into clickers as well?" he asked, inadvertently using the terminology from The Last of Us, where such zombies existed as well, just looking a bit different because the infection was funghi based in the games.

"They are also significantly stronger and faster than the previous iteration, and yes, we have two of them," the scribe said.

"Programmed then, it is very hard to believe in independent mutations with the same results," Jin decided. "I don't know if that's good or not, considering that programming implies there is an end to this mess somewhere. Technically, the ability to mutate is infinite. However, programming means that all the stages will have a clearly defined combat potential rather than sometimes also being duds. How did they get such well-preserved corpses anyway? The dark side has been lost forever," he complained, not expecting an answer.

"You'd have to ask a dark-side historian for that. Insane cultivators who sometimes go to the dark side to gather information," the general complained.

"The noble families of the Kingdom alliance have the habit of embalming the corpses of their dead with qi, which can keep them fresh technically forever," Elder Flower suddenly spoke up, becoming an unexpected source of information. "I imagine it was the same there, which ironically means that the nobility preserved their ancestors only for them to become the perfect hosts for this rotten technique." She turned to the general. "I assume you have started creating different sets of armour for the soldiers to use in the conflict to prevent infections?"

The general nodded, lips tight. "Equipment is being developed. I assume the fact that the zombies will be targeting mortals is intentional from the demons. There are more of them in the army, and we can't use them, considering they have likely planned for our intervention more than ever going by this strategy. The production is not going to suffice to equip everyone. Our forces will either be at risk or cut in half from the get-go. However, matters of strategy should be discussed in a different council," he said.

"Actually," the scribe suddenly spoke up with an unexpected suggestion. "Considering inner disciple Jin's startlingly clear view of the situation, perhaps it would be wise to include him."

Jin had thought the man didn't like him. Maybe he'd been wrong.

Unfortunately, Jin knew that most of what he'd said had been bullshit lifted straight from a variety of video games and other modern media. Also, considering they'd already told him from the get-go that a zombie had mutated, it hardly qualified as being smart to retcon an explanation that he had always expected mutations to happen. He didn't know much about this world, qi, cultivation and military tactics. If he went to meetings like these, he'd just expose himself as a fraud. It was better to leave when everyone still fought. He had an above-average intelligence.

Also, talking with people of higher rank had never sounded like a very good idea in the cultivation world. He'd rather abstain. He thus shook his head. "I am certainly unqualified to receive such a privilege. Other than accidental insights, I am better used to continuing my project with the inclusion of this new knowledge," he said, nodding towards the once again silenced clicker.

The general scrutinised him for a second at the answer, deep eyes seemingly peering straight into his soul. The man was just about to say something when Elder Flower put a hand on the disciple's shoulder.

"He's right," she said. "Jin's skillset is extremely focused on producing scenarios. Perhaps he should go back to doing that instead of giving unfounded opinions on military matters he does not understand."

The general raised an eyebrow at the words before nodding. "We'll be counting on you then, inner disciple Jin. I am curious to see your scenario when it is finished," he said.

Jin nodded back at the man before suddenly being whisked away again.

No pressure, right?

Bleurgh.