The trembling hen hesitated for a moment. Surrounded by curses and laughter telling her to jump down and become food, she finally leapt off and landed squarely on the hippo's head. She clamped her claws tight around it and pecked down hard. A small pit appeared where her beak struck.
The entire arena burst into laughter.
"Holy shit, this chicken's crazy! Is it planning to eat the hippo?"
"It looks more like she's scratching it to death!"
Jing Shu ignored the roaring crowd and turned to Peggy. "Have you ever heard an old Chinese saying, 'constant dripping wears through stone'?"
The hippo struggled violently, shaking its massive head and slamming against the iron bars, but it couldn't throw the hen off. So it kept repeating the same motion like a broken machine, thrashing and ramming in frustration.
As for the hen, she just went wild. She pecked again and again, each strike sharper and more precise, until her beak drilled a small hole. Then she started eating the rotting flesh inside.
Rotting meat was nothing new to her. She'd eaten worse—red nematodes, poisonous snakes, you name it. Thanks to daily doses of Spirit Spring, she'd long become immune to toxins. At home, she was even known by another nickname: "The Bottomless Pit."
She could devour hundreds of kilos of red nematodes by herself. Her stomach couldn't possibly hold all that, so she ate while pooping—a perpetual motion machine.
Jing Shu genuinely admired chickens. She didn't respect many things in this world, but she respected them. They were straightforward creatures—eat and release, no nonsense.
Time crawled on. The crowd started yawning. Sure, the chicken wasn't powerful, but she was nimble enough to dodge the hippo's attacks. Once she perched on its head, the beast couldn't do a damn thing. Still, for all that pecking, she'd barely made a dent.
"This chicken's insane. She's seriously trying to eat the hippo!"
"Give her ten stomachs, see if she can finish it!"
To the audience, it was a joke—like watching an ant trying to eat an elephant. They saw it as the chicken's last desperate struggle. The zombie hippo didn't tire; it just kept swinging and crashing around. One mistake from her, and she'd die horribly.
Honestly, she was only surviving because it was a zombie hippo. If it had been a zombie snake or crocodile, she'd already be done for.
At first, everyone was hyped. The host was doing his best to keep the energy up, shouting every time the hippo almost flung the hen off or slammed into the cage with a thunderous clang. Each time, the crowd jumped to their feet and cheered.
But after the third time, the fourth time, the tenth time… even the host was running out of breath, and the audience's throats were dry from yelling.
Ten minutes passed. The hippo's head now had a hole the size of a fist. No blood, just disgusting wriggling flesh. It looked like countless bugs moving under the skin. The hen kept pecking and eating, one bite at a time. Some of the flesh even fought back, wrapping around her neck or sticking to her like suction cups.
The crowd thought this was it. The undead hippo would finally kill her. But no—she just ate everything that touched her.
Just when the host didn't know what else to say, the hen was finally thrown off. The entire audience jumped up. Was the match over?!
Of course not.
Maybe she'd eaten too much, because when she hit the ground, she let out a loud series of splats. Then, to everyone's horror, the charging hippo suddenly stopped, bent its head down, and started eating her poop.
The arena went dead silent. Even Peggy nearly threw up.
Once the zombie hippo had something to eat, it stopped being violent. The hen, realizing this, looked like she'd found the key to victory. She got busy—like a worker bee. She'd hop down to drop a few more piles, sometimes even lay an egg or two, then fly back up to peck the hippo's head again. And so the cycle repeated.
The zombie hippo really was terrifying—immune to bullets, immune to pain, attacking anything that moved. But when it had food, it completely ignored everything else.
Half an hour later, most of its head was gone, yet it still kept eating. Like a programmed machine, it knew only one thing: consume.
The atmosphere in the arena turned strange. The crowd went from confident to confused, to dumbfounded, and now to restless anger. It was a roller coaster of disbelief.
Even Peggy hadn't expected this. Who would've thought the key to defeating a monster like this was just… feeding it? How brain-dead could it get?
Jing Shu hadn't seen it coming either. She hadn't imagined this method would actually work against a zombie hippo. Xiao Dou had made history here.
The shouts and curses grew louder. People were panicking now. Too much money was riding on this fight. They refused to believe that a hippo, impervious to bullets, could lose to such a ridiculous tactic.
"No way! That thing weighs tons! There's no way that chicken can eat it all!"
"Even if she does, eating zombie flesh should kill her sooner or later!"
The host's heart was pounding. Was this really happening? He'd bet just one black market coin at the start. Was he about to make thousands of times that in profit?
Peggy was getting nervous, while Jing Shu sat calmly with her legs crossed, watching her hen work. Xiao Dou didn't have many talents, but she could eat like nothing else alive.
The crowd's hope drained away. The zombie hippo's entire head had been eaten clean. The ground was littered with chicken droppings. The sheer amount she'd consumed was monstrous, and she was still eating while digesting nonstop.
The headless zombie didn't fall. Instead, its skin opened up into millions of tiny pores that sucked in everything around it. The hen kept eating too. Three, four hours passed. The multi-ton hippo was reduced to nothing but bones.
It was a miserable match to watch. No intense clashes, no thrilling kills—just a contest of who could eat more. The hippo hadn't lost because it couldn't eat, but because it picked the wrong opponent.
When the skeleton finally collapsed with a thud, the ten-thousand-coin zombie hippo was gone. The match was officially over.
The black market and the audience didn't want to admit it, but there was no denying it now—the hen had won.
"Alright," the host announced, voice shaking, "I declare it official. The battle chicken's ten-match death challenge... is a success!"
The arena exploded with curses and disbelief.
But among the chaos, a small voice shouted from the crowd. "Holy shit, I did it! I won five thousand black market coins! I'm set for life!"