Apocalypse, then transforming into a magical girl

After the huge, dark red cloud finally drifted away, the rain also subsided.

The two followed behind the man, bypassing the monsters, and headed towards the shopping mall not far away.

The man limped ahead, explaining his situation to the two in a hoarse voice. His name was Jiang Fu, and his son, Jiang Zi, was currently being held captive by a group of people in the mall.

"...Leaving aside the incredibly random name you came up with, I think that unless someone is crazy, they wouldn't make things difficult for a doctor in the apocalypse." Zhao Jia's voice was skeptical as he looked at Jiang Fu's back.

Faced with Zhao Jia's questioning, Jiang Fu could only stammer and give evasive answers.

"It doesn't matter, we're pretty good at this." Xia Zhaozhao said casually, "If he dares to lie to us, we'll just give him a good beating. This kind of thing happens all the time in sandbox games."

The three eventually slipped into the dark underground parking garage through an employee entrance next to the mall.

They climbed up the fire escape stairs, twisting and turning, passing through several fire doors, and finally circled around to a room in the corner of the mall.

This appeared to be a pet grooming shop. Jiang Fu pushed open the slightly ajar back door, but there was no animal smell coming out, which made the two of them feel a little strange.

In the corner of the room, a man was huddled up. Hearing the door open, he jerked his head up, his eyes warily fixed on the three people in the doorway.

When his gaze fell on Jiang Fu, his wariness instantly turned into contempt and disdain.

"Xiao Shen?" Jiang Fu's voice was somewhat embarrassed as he stood stiffly in place.

Xiao Shen spat out a mouthful of phlegm accurately onto the floor at Jiang Fu's feet. A mocking smile appeared on his lips as he glanced at the two people in front of him, a hint of amusement in his eyes.

"What, is this the bodyguard you hired? Preparing to rescue your beastly son?" He looked at Jiang Fu.

"He said he was a doctor and wanted us to help him rescue his son," Zhao Jia said calmly, explaining the situation directly.

He was somewhat surprised by the man's aggressive reaction—could it be that this man named Jiang Fu had offended him?

Upon hearing this, Xiao Shen burst out laughing, the sound echoing throughout the strange pet grooming shop.

After finally finishing laughing, he looked at the two people in front of him and bluntly exposed them:

"A doctor? You've been fooled! This guy's a veterinarian! He and his son own this shop!"

Zhao Jia and Xia Zhaozhao exchanged a speechless glance.

"...Let's go, this isn't the doctor we're looking for." Xia Zhaozhao said, already taking a step back towards the back door of the pet grooming shop.

Jiang Fu's face turned deathly pale instantly. He hurriedly reached out, trying to grab the hem of their clothes, but missed. He quickly explained:

"No, don't go, don't go! My son is a real doctor, a doctor who graduated from a proper medical school! As long as you rescue my son, he'll treat anyone!"

"Pah!" Seeing this, Xiao Shen's disdain deepened. He snorted coldly, "Don't believe him! You can't expect anything good to come out of a dog's mouth! This guy is notorious around here!"

"Why do you say that?" Zhao Jia turned his gaze to Xiao Shen and pressed for an answer.

Xiao Shen explained with a mocking expression, "Do you know why there's no dog or cat smell here? Because these two are actually selling fake medicine; the animal care shop is just a front!"

"Their side job, or rather their real main job, is selling veterinary drugs to those guys building muscle at the gym next door—things like Naphthol, Trenbolone, Naphthol Decanoate, Naphthol Phenylpropionate… ever heard of them?"

"Their real way of making money is by injecting those things into people at the gym!"

Zhao Jia and Xia Zhaozhao's gazes fell on Jiang Fu again.

"He really is a liar. Should we beat him up before we leave?" Xia Zhaozhao said unhappily.

Jiang Fu's body trembled slightly, and he hurriedly defended himself, his voice tinged with panic: "We couldn't get those things at all! Actually, what we gave those guys was saline solution! We were only after money, not murder!"

"Oh? If it's just a saline solution, how could it kill someone?" Zhao Jia asked sarcastically.

"It's probably meant to be stuck in someone's brain," Xia Zhaozhao said.

Xiao Shen glanced at Jiang Fu, whose face was ashen, his expression full of mockery, and continued to add insult to injury: "The time they stabbed someone to death, they mistook potassium chloride for sodium chloride."

"That unlucky guy who was building muscle was given an intravenous injection of an extremely large dose of potassium chloride, and he died on the spot while convulsing."

He then looked at the two people in front of him: "Are you from out of town? Ignore this beast. Either get out of here, or stay here with me. There's some food here. The water in the mall is murky; it's not worth risking your life for this beast."

"The water is murky? What's going on?" Xia Zhaozhao became interested.

Just then, they suddenly heard a lot of arguing coming from inside the mall.

Xia Zhaozhao and Zhao Jia simultaneously lowered their bodies and silently lay down beside the main entrance, peering out through the crack in the door.

The mall lobby was in a mess, with display cases lying haphazardly and shards of glass scattered all over the floor.

At this moment, there were still quite a few people in the hall, but they were divided into two distinct factions.

The leader of one of the factions was a woman, possibly nearly two meters tall, extremely obese, with a huge belly. It was a miracle that she could stand and even move normally.

"...The Great Joyful Female Bodhisattva?" Zhao Jia exclaimed.

"Bommer?" Xia Zhaozhao exclaimed in surprise.

"Bo Mo? How do you know her name is Bo Mo?" Xiao Shen looked at Xia Zhaozhao with some surprise, wondering why she knew this woman's name.

The leader of the other row was a man covered in tattoos, with bulging muscles, who was glaring angrily at the woman in front of him.

In this standoff, the man was clearly at a disadvantage—because he was only 1.6 meters tall.

Seeing that the two were somewhat curious, Xiao Shen simply lowered his voice and continued to explain to them.

Jiang Fu has quite a few connections; he actually managed to suppress the fact that a misdiagnosis had resulted in someone being stabbed to death.

However, the deceased's wife, the "bommer" Xia Zhaozhao mentioned, was a gangster who came to seek revenge with a group of henchmen.

What's even more baffling is that the deceased's apprentice, Ah Long from the gym, completely disbelieved Bo Mo's explanation, believing that his master's cause of death was simply that he wasn't tough enough to withstand acupuncture. He even brought several burly men to protect the father and son who were giving them acupuncture.

"When the disaster first struck, everyone worked together to seal off most of the entrances immediately, preventing the monsters outside from getting in."

"Oh? You reacted pretty quickly."

Xiao Shen's voice carried a hint of sarcasm: "But after that, in order to seize control of the narrative here, all the survivors were forced to split into two factions."

"Right now, this place is nothing short of a gladiatorial arena for these two beasts."