Chapter 71
Two beams of yellow searchlights cut through the road ahead, piercing the oppressive darkness.
Yet, for the silent and desolate night, this faint light failed to bring any real sense of security. Instead, it made the shadowy, unclear path ahead seem even more like a lurking beast, waiting to devour them.
When they discovered that the road ahead was blocked by a fallen tree, the group had no choice but to stop and get out of their vehicles.
The man in the black jacket crouched down with a flashlight, carefully inspecting the situation.
The snow was falling heavily, with no sign of letting up.
A thin layer of snow, about half a finger thick, had already accumulated on the ground. Based on his experience, he estimated that in less than half a day, this road would become completely buried and impassable.
A companion suggested, “Should we move the tree and keep going?”
The man in the black jacket was about to reply when a pair of yellow headlights appeared behind them, casting light over the road where they stood.
Everyone turned to see Wen Xin driving his off-road vehicle toward their location.
Strength commanded respect anywhere, regardless of circumstances or identity.
Especially when that strength came with a calm demeanor and no sense of arrogance.
Someone whispered excitedly, “You have to admit, this is the third time we’ve run into him. Feels like fate, doesn’t it?”
Another person scoffed. “Fate, my foot. The other roads are completely blocked, and this is the only way to the highway ramp. Where else was he going to go?”
Thud.
Wen Xin stepped out of his vehicle.
He wore a dustproof mask, a black, thickened tactical vest, and well-fitted insulated combat pants. His hands were gloved, and his snow boots reached his calves. Even in the snowstorm and pitch-black night, his posture was steady and composed.
In a few steps, he reached the group.
Noticing the fallen tree blocking the road, he brushed the snow off its surface and pulled out a knife, slicing it into the bark.
The wood beneath was dry, free of moisture.
Wen Xin then moved to the fractured end of the trunk, inspecting the broken section more closely.
The man in the black jacket, watching him examine the tree for some time, walked over. “See something, kid?”
Thanks to the two bags of ginger-infused brown sugar earlier, which had preserved some of the girl’s sanity, the group couldn’t help but feel grateful toward the young man.
Wen Xin didn’t hold back his thoughts. “This tree didn’t fall long ago. Judging by the state of its dried fibers, it’s been broken for no more than ten days.”
The man clicked his tongue, impressed.
They had already suspected the tree hadn’t been down for long—the fresh stump was a clear sign. But they hadn’t pinpointed it with the precision Wen Xin demonstrated.
Under these circumstances, this sudden blockage felt oddly out of place.
Seeming to recall something, Wen Xin turned to the group. “You mentioned earlier that you had to reroute because the original path was blocked by debris. What exactly was the situation there?”
One of them described the scene.
“We were heading to a transit station to refuel, but the road was blocked by several wrecked cars. There were a lot of zombies trapped in the vehicles.”
“There must’ve been at least a dozen cars. No way we could clear them all, so we had to backtrack and take another route.”
Wen Xin asked, “Did the vehicles show any signs of being tampered with?”
The question left the speaker momentarily stunned.
Typically, when encountering blocked roads teeming with zombies, most people would assume it was the result of an attack and not look deeper.
That had been their exact reaction.
For safety’s sake, none of them had considered getting out of their vehicles and exposing themselves to danger.
And really, there had been no need to investigate. Moving a dozen cars by hand was impossible, especially with zombies lurking nearby.
Wen Xin had faced similar circumstances.
However, traveling alone had freed him from many constraints. He had briefly inspected the scene and noticed an intriguing detail.
Several of the zombies, whether trapped in the vehicles or wandering nearby, wore cheap, mass-produced white tank tops printed with “XXX Construction Site.”
The man in the black jacket noticed Wen Xin deep in thought and asked, “Are you suggesting someone deliberately blocked our way?”
Before Wen Xin could answer, the man shook his head. “We considered that too. But this area is practically deserted. There aren’t even enough buildings for anyone to hide in, let alone any sign of living people.”
“We searched the vicinity earlier and found no suspicious activity.”
The snow had started falling days ago, turning the asphalt roads and surrounding woods into a muddy, slushy mess.
If anyone had passed through, there would have been tracks.
Unless they somehow knew in advance that someone would be driving this route and set up the roadblocks before the snowfall.
Wen Xin understood how implausible this sounded. After all, in the aftermath of the apocalypse, no one would willingly undertake a long journey in such severe weather.
The group, however, had no intention of waiting any longer.
This place lacked any shelter from the snow or wind and wasn’t safe for prolonged stops.
If they didn’t clear the tree now, it would be even harder to move once the snow piled up by morning. Staying put wasn’t an option.
As Wen Xin furrowed his brows in contemplation, the group turned back toward their minibuses, calling for more hands to help.
Two people stood guard, watching the perimeter.
The others grabbed wooden poles, wedging them into the gap between the tree trunk and the ground, and began heaving together.
“Alright, on the count of three, push hard!”
Amid their collective effort, Wen Xin heard a faint rustling sound. It was so soft it almost seemed like a figment of his imagination.
Alerted, he quickly shifted his attention, scanning for the source of the sound.
What he saw was the teenage boy peering out curiously from one of the bus windows.
The boy seemed fascinated by the commotion and excitement of everyone moving the tree. He stepped down to the bus door’s entryway, eager to get a closer look.
One of the guards stationed at the door noticed the boy’s movement and instinctively turned to stop him.
And in that seemingly calm moment, disaster struck!
The man at the bus door froze, his body stiffening in panic. Looking down in alarm, he let out a broken, high-pitched shout: “What is that?!”
Before the words were fully out, he was yanked backward and fell flat on his back!
The boy’s hand was grabbed by the panicked man as he fell, causing the boy to lurch forward and tumble to the ground in a daze, stars dancing before his eyes.
Before he could recover, a powerful yank on his wrist nearly dislocated his arm—the man who had grabbed him hadn’t let go.
The man’s terror-filled eyes were wide, his face awash with tears as he clung to the boy. His voice broke as he begged, “Young master, save me! I don’t want to die, please save me!”
The boy stared back, stunned. “What?”
This commotion jolted the man in the black jacket and the others back to their senses. Shouting, they rushed over, their flashlights sweeping under the bus.
The boy found himself locking eyes with the creature dragging the man—a mutated ant, grotesquely enlarged and deformed. Its spindly, segmented limbs allowed it to coil effortlessly within the narrow space beneath the bus.
The flashlight’s beam illuminated its serrated jaws, which were embedded deep into the man’s thigh. Blood dripped onto the ground, pooling beneath the man and staining the ant’s twitching compound eyes a deep crimson.
Terror overtook the boy, spreading across his face like a shadow.
“Ahhh!”
Scrambling on hands and knees, he tried to crawl away, but the mutated ant had already fixed its gaze on him. One spear-like foreleg thrust forward, aiming directly at the boy’s chest.
If he couldn’t evade, he would be impaled on the spot.
In the split second before disaster struck, a gunshot cracked through the night.
The compound eyes that had been coldly targeting the boy burst apart in an instant, spraying blood and inky black fluid everywhere. The ant let out a pained screech, loosening its grip on the man.
The boy and the injured man were dragged out from under the bus by Wen Xin.
“Xiao Lin, are you alright?”
A girl appeared at the bus door, her face pale as she saw the boy lying limp on the ground near Wen Xin.
Before she could rush to his side, she froze in horror.
Rustle.
From within the dense forest, pairs of glowing crimson eyes emerged one after another. Without exception, they all belonged to mutated ants.
Their thin, jointed limbs sank into the snow, leaving no tracks or discernible sounds as they moved. Like silent reapers, they had already raised their scythes over the group’s heads.
“Run!!”
Faced with this chilling sight, the group abandoned all other thoughts. Wielding their long knives, they retreated toward the bus while fending off the attackers.
One quick-thinking individual raised a flamethrower, the blinding flames temporarily driving the ants back.
Wen Xin darted back to his off-road vehicle.
The mutated ants seemed to know better than to approach the area near Ah Lü and the others, as if recognizing a predator they couldn’t challenge.
Thanks to this, Wen Xin encountered no obstacles upon returning to his car.
The moment he stepped inside, Ah Lü leaped onto his shoulder, narrowing its eyes as it observed the frenzied ants through the headlights.
“Wen Xin, something’s strange. It’s like they’re being controlled by someone.”
Wen Xin had already noticed. His return wasn’t just to regroup—it was to change weapons.
The gun he had been using had an effective range of 200 meters, but the enemy pulling the strings was clearly beyond that distance.
From a storage case, Wen Xin began assembling a sniper rifle with practiced precision. “Can you sense which direction their controller is in?” he asked.
Ah Lü closed its eyes for a moment, its senses rippling outward before indicating a direction.
Without hesitation, Wen Xin adjusted his weapon, aiming in the direction Ah Lü had pointed. He flipped open the high-powered scope’s cover and peered through.
The heavy snowfall blurred visibility significantly, making hitting a target under such conditions nearly impossible.
Meanwhile, the group by the bus had piled inside. Seeing Wen Xin pull out a sniper rifle, they were too stunned to comment, instead reflexively shouting, “Don’t bother aiming! Just run! There are too many of them—you can’t shoot them all!”
But then they realized Wen Xin wasn’t aiming at the ants on the ground. His rifle pointed upward, toward the sky.
Their shock deepened. “What are you doing aiming at the sky? Shooting birds? Run already!”
Bang!
A single gunshot rang out, the bullet slicing through the storm like a meteor streaking across the night.
The group held their breath, waiting for something to happen, only to hear nothing unusual. For a brief moment, they thought Wen Xin had missed entirely, wasting a shot.
But just as they were about to flee without him, the ants froze in place.
They spun in circles, their movements erratic and aimless, as if suddenly confused about what to do.
When one of the ants was struck by a stray bullet, the rest flinched as though frightened and began scurrying away in a panic.
From inside the bus, the group turned to look at Wen Xin, now standing outside his off-road vehicle. Their gazes sparkled with awe, as if they were witnessing a deity descending upon them.
Inside the off-road vehicle, the red panda pressed its paws against the window, staring at Wen Xin with wide-eyed admiration. “You hit it?”
But Wen Xin shook his head. “Didn’t hear a sound. Probably missed.”
Having only trained with a sniper rifle for a few months, it was near impossible to hit a target with perfect accuracy under such harsh conditions.
The red panda blinked, confused. “Then why did you shoot?”
Wen Xin reached out and ruffled its head. “To warn whoever’s controlling them. Let them know I know where they are. If they’re afraid, they’ll think twice before launching another attack.”
The red panda fell silent. It seemed absurd, yet somehow reasonable.
The rest of the group, of course, didn’t know this. Even if they did, they would still have been in awe.
When they saw Wen Xin approaching their bus, the girl hesitated, wary of the gun in his hands, but eventually instructed the driver to open the door.
Inside, the injured man lay on the floor, hastily bandaged but still breathing weakly.
Wen Xin examined the injured man’s wounds, which were grim. The prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures would only worsen his condition by impeding blood circulation.
If this group wanted to save him, they needed to find shelter where they could stay warm as soon as possible.
What Wen Xin thought of, the man in the black jacket and his companions had already realized.
Their expressions were grim as one of them said, “We have to move that tree and keep going. We need to find a place to take shelter before the snow buries the road.”
Otherwise, they would have to risk venturing into the dense forest, where the dangers posed by unknown mutant creatures were even greater.
At that moment, the pale-faced girl spoke up. “You all head out and move the tree. Take your equipment with you. One person can stay behind to guard the vehicle.”
The others objected.
The mutated ants had targeted the minibus first. If everyone left, and another incident like the last one happened, how would they get back in time to help?
But the girl displayed an unyielding decisiveness. “All of you, go. Don’t worry about us.”
She turned to the still-shaken boy beside her. “Are you going with them, or staying in the vehicle?”
The boy clung tightly to her, his voice trembling. “I’m staying with you, sis!”
Reluctantly, the man in the black jacket and his team disembarked.
The girl then turned to Wen Xin. “Thank you. This is the third time you’ve helped us.”
The first had been saving the chef, the second giving them the ginger-infused brown sugar, and the third pulling the boy and the injured man out of the mutated ant’s jaws.
Wen Xin shook his head slightly. “It was nothing.”
The girl smiled faintly. “No, you’re being modest.”
She hadn’t believed kindness could still exist in the apocalypse until this young man selflessly extended a helping hand to them—not once, but three times.
“With your skills and strength, you don’t need our help,” the girl continued, pulling a gold-embossed invitation from her pocket. “But I noticed you’re heading toward Rose City. This invitation might come in handy.”
Wen Xin’s attention shifted to the card. “What’s this?”
“Have you ever heard of the Minotaur myth?” the girl asked. “Someone used its name to establish an arena. It’s like a thread that guides you through a labyrinth.”
