Infused with Your Flesh and Blood

On the fourth day after entering the dungeon world, Liu Zheng woke up amidst a series of roaring shouts.

Opening his eyes, he saw the Ox-Horse doing sit-ups. With its massive bulk, the pressure it exerted on the floor was no less than a pile driver.

"Big boss, are you trying to test if the foundations are strong enough?" Liu Zheng teased.

"What do you know? We're heading to Paradise Island soon, so I need to work on my waist strength," the Ox-Horse replied.

"What does Paradise Island have to do with working on your waist strength?"

"You little punk, don't tell me you're still a virgin?" The Ox-Horse shot him a sidelong glance.

"Hey, why are you suddenly insulting me?" Liu Zheng protested with displeasure.

"If you're not a virgin, how can you not understand this? The service standards at Paradise Island are even higher than those in the black market," the Ox-Horse said with a yearning expression.

"Aren't you going with your wife?" Do members of the Ox-Horse race play this wild?

"Those beauty and cosmetic shops will be enough to keep her busy; she won't have time to look for me. Besides, as long as I tell her I'm going fishing, she loses patience after three minutes at most," the Ox-Horse said smugly.

"Pfft! What a scumbag," Liu Zheng despised.

"Hmph, don't blame others for having low morals just because yours are too high. Besides, compared to other oxen and horses, I'm considered a model husband—at least I bring my own wife on vacation," the Ox-Horse defended itself logically.

"Your circle is really a mess."

After exchanging a few more idle remarks, their locker chimed. The employee meal had arrived.

"Hurry, hurry, hurry! Bring your meal over to your daddy," the Ox-Horse said excitedly.

"Are you really that hungry?" Liu Zheng took a step back, afraid it might be starving to the point of gnawing on him as well.

"You know nothing. Every time you help in the kitchen, they give you a proper meal the next day, better than anything you can buy outside."

"Even after you offended Napoleon so badly yesterday, they're still giving one this time?"

"That old geezer may be petty, but he keeps his word. As long as he hasn't cancelled it, there will definitely be one."

"Fine then." Liu Zheng shrugged and retrieved his portion of the employee meal from the locker.

Upon opening it, an expression of disgust immediately crossed his face. One rat head after another was embedded in the flatbread, staring up at the starry sky, surrounded by neatly cut circular slices of rat meat arranged in a ring. The severed rat tails were placed in the center of the pizza, forming a typhoon-like shape.

"Name: Vampire Rat Family Reunion Pizza"
"Type: Item"
"Quality: Epic"
"Effect 1: Restores a large amount of stamina."
"Effect 2: Grants the 'Blood Thirst' status for 72 hours."
"Description: A family should always stay neatly together."
"Can be taken out of the dungeon: Yes"
"Blood Thirst: During the status duration, periodic intense urges to consume blood will occur. If the blood thirst is not satisfied, all attributes decrease by 10 points; if satisfied, all attributes increase by 10 points. Consuming high-quality blood grants a chance for additional effects."

"Hey, isn't this that nest of rats you used as ingredients?" the Ox-Horse asked in surprise.

Liu Zheng was startled, and upon closer inspection, it truly was. The largest rat head inside was none other than the rat with mixed gray fur. He remembered clearly that it had a total of 53 whiskers, with two more on the right side than the left.

"Hahaha, I won't fight you for this one."
"After all, they are infused with your flesh and blood, aren't they?" the Ox-Horse said with a wink.

Liu Zheng looked at the rat pizza, his expression shifting uncertainly.

"Of course, if you really don't want to eat it, I can help you out. No need to thank me too much," the Ox-Horse said considerately.

He glanced at his shrunken tentacles. Although it didn't show on the system panel, his true attributes had dropped by at least half. Going out in such a state was practically tantamount to seeking death.

"I'll eat it."

Liu Zheng picked up a slice of the pizza, closed his eyes, and shoved it into his mouth. Unexpectedly, the texture wasn't bad at all—it even tasted better than any pizza he had ever eaten in reality. The rat meat had no gamey odor; instead, it possessed a texture resembling Wagyu beef.

Yet, the moment he thought of what they originally looked like, waves of nausea surged within him. Even so, he fought back his revulsion and finished the entire plate of pizza completely.

Soon, Liu Zheng's stomach began to burn as if caught in a fire. The searing pain twisted his features. However, even more distorted was his physical body. Beneath his epidermis, his flesh rolled and rippled as though mice were running underneath, constantly swelling and deforming. In the midst of this transformation, his size ballooned like a blowing balloon, expanding even larger than before. During the reorganization, his remaining human skin was completely destroyed, turning into a chitin-like exoskeleton.

Liu Zheng gazed at his pitch-black, glossy tentacles and remained silent.

"Don't you want to look in the mirror?" the Ox-Horse asked with malicious glee.

"No need," he replied indifferently.

The Ox-Horse seemed to take great pleasure in watching him completely degenerate into a non-human. Little did it know that as long as he cleared the dungeon, he could revert to his original form. The residents of this world, though bizarre and powerful, were still frogs at the bottom of a well. And while he was weak, as long as he survived, infinite possibilities awaited him.

"Hey, what kind of look is that?" the Ox-Horse said unhappily.

"Nothing." Liu Zheng cast a pitying glance at it and looked away.

He had already decided to use the sick leave note, but before that, some preparatory work needed to be done.

"Big boss, did you save my wine?" he asked.

"First tell me what you meant by that look just now," the Ox-Horse persisted relentlessly.

"It was reverence, it was looking up in awe, it was the feeling of ants gazing at a towering giant tree, the self-pity of a cicada before a phoenix."

"Huh?" The Ox-Horse blinked with a naive, blank look.

"You're too awesome, I admire you so much," Liu Zheng sighed.

"Hmph, at least you have some discernment, kid. Here you go."

The Ox-Horse rummaged through a pile of wine bottles and fished out three unopened ones for him.

"Thanks, big boss."

Liu Zheng took the wine bottles, walked to the entrance, and sat down. Now, all he had to do was wait for that hand to appear.

After more than an hour, the sliding partition panel was finally pushed open. The ghost hand crawled in stealthily, only to find Liu Zheng staring right at it. For a moment, it was caught off guard and even forgot to put down the delivery slip.

Remembering the rules, Liu Zheng said nothing and merely placed the three bottles of wine in front of it.

Faced with this situation, the ghost hand curled its four fingers into a fist while its index finger pointed into empty air, seemingly deep in thought. After a long consideration, it uncurled its fingers, and a human mouth grew right in the center of its palm. Then, it swallowed the three bottles of wine whole, glass and all.

Seconds later, a flush of red spread from the center of its palm across the entire hand. The withered and decaying ghost hand suddenly looked much more vibrant.

Wobblily, it dropped the delivery slip, and wobblily, it crawled back out of the lounge. Aside from the delivery slip on the floor, nothing else happened.

"Hahahaha!!!"

The Ox-Horse burst into another fit of roaring laughter.

"Stunned, aren't you? Did you think everyone plays fair with you like me and that tree? Someone plays speculative games every day, and now he's finally taken a huge hit!"

It laughed so hard that the abdominal muscles it had just worked out began to ache.

"Just three wine bottles, consider it doing a good deed. When you have money, you can afford to be willful."

Though slightly surprised, Liu Zheng didn't take it to heart. It had been a casual move anyway, and he hadn't truly counted on winning anything from it.

He picked up the delivery slip and looked at the information written on it:

"Item: A portion of Wood Elf Milk"
"Address: West River Center, Building E, Room 403"
"Recipient: Manager Wang"
"Time Limit: Within forty minutes."

"Huh, it's not a residential community this time?"

And there was an actual recipient named. Liu Zheng's expression shifted slightly. This delivery order felt like it wasn't going to go smoothly.