Chapter 238: Xu Su Was Accused
As they moved deeper, zombies grew more numerous and stronger. The team’s pace slowed, abilities drained heavily, but their inner resilience pushed everyone to keep going until they were utterly exhausted and sent to a temporary resting place ten stories high to recover.
By the end, most of the area was held up by A-rank ability users. Unconsciously, all the ability users gathered together, back to back, abilities flying wildly against the massive zombie horde.
Lu Weiyi sat on the rooftop, legs dangling, swaying slightly as if he could fall any moment. From the side window, he could see people resting inside.
Below, about twenty ability users fought against hundreds of zombies.
Lu Weiyi’s eyes focused on a few people down below. The small green vine hovered nearby, ensuring the number of zombies rushing in matched the number they killed.
“Why does it feel like they’re endless?” Li Yan, an A-rank wood ability user barely holding on, gasped, voicing what many new members felt.
“Because… someone’s controlling their numbers,” said Xu Sa, the only B-rank ability user. His eyes were wide and he kept compressing his powers.
All those who had retreated were not from Team One.
They were fewer in number but had been pushing hard on every hunt, carefully managing ability consumption to the minimum.
“Who’s so despicable…” Li Yan’s voice cracked as he collapsed from exhaustion. Zombies were about to hit him; he couldn’t even lift his arm and silently closed his eyes.
Lu Weiyi’s mental barrier immediately blocked the attack. The vine dragged Li Yan out of the circle. Li Qing and Lei Jun helped carry him back to the temporary resting room.
When Li Yan gave Lu Weiyi a gasping look, Lu Weiyi replied seriously, “I’m that despicable!”
The surrounding people barely held back their laughter. Li Yan’s expression turned sheepish.
One by one, those who had exhausted their abilities were brought up. When only Team One remained, Lu Weiyi stopped paying attention.
He no longer killed zombies rushing in but used mental power to block them at the perimeter.
In half an hour, Team One slaughtered hundreds of zombies nearby.
Before anyone could relax, Lu Weiyi withdrew his mental barrier, and the zombies immediately charged at a few people.
Everyone resting upstairs by the window witnessed this and looked at Lu Weiyi in disbelief, clearly not expecting such a move.
“They… ran out of strength…” came the honest, somewhat naive voice of Zhao Li.
Lu Weiyi glanced back and smiled slightly at him. Those sitting below jumped up immediately upon seeing the zombies. Even though they needed support to stand, and standing was difficult, they still formed a formidable line.
Their unyielding spirit was etched into every bone.
Seeing this team, everyone got one clear message: Don’t mess with them.
Everyone in the room fell silent for a long moment.
The comfortable life on the island had made these people, who had been tormented by zombies, lose something etched in their souls. They now only had the appearance of soldiers but had forgotten what the military spirit truly was.
They kept improving every day, finding ways to rank up, but ignored why they upgraded in the first place. If they couldn’t get up one morning, their first reaction was to accept fate, not to struggle and fight.
With him as their backing and protector, there was still a chance for survival. But what would happen if one day he was gone? What would they face then?
Lu Weiyi didn’t say anything more provocative. After the last zombie downstairs was killed, he brought everyone up.
The moment they landed, no one spoke. They all collapsed to the ground to rest, breathing heavily as if their lungs contained bellows. Their eyes were wide open, hands tightly gripping various weapons, always alert to any possible danger.
Never giving up any chance to survive—that’s what the apocalypse should have been remembered and persevered by everyone.
Reborn into this life, Lu Weiyi’s control over his abilities was more precise. Many powers of his S-rank abilities could be fully utilized—it was just a matter of duration.
What Lu Weiyi needed to train now was control and explosion.
Mental control was divided into mind control and body control. The latter was easier; the former was more delicate and practical.
In his previous life, Lu Weiyi only started training control after reaching SS-rank, but now he could start earlier.
Compared to humans, zombies without minds were easier to control.
“I… I didn’t see wrong, right? That zombie is picking at its own crystal core?” Xu Sa was on guard duty after lunch, patrolling when he saw a lone zombie wandering and circling in the courtyard downstairs.
It seemed compulsive, like an OCD behavior—circling all four corners of the yard before doing anything else. At first, those who wanted to escort it out were curious, watching a while until the zombie started self-harming.
At first, it kept banging its head against the walls, then it reached into its eye socket to pick something out.
A year into the apocalypse, zombies had no intact flesh; decayed limbs were falling off at any moment. The eyeballs in the sockets fell out at the slightest touch.
The scene was disgusting. Xu Sa couldn’t help but look away just as the zombie collapsed weakly—obviously because its crystal core had been removed.
The noisy reaction attracted a few curious people who came to watch as Xu Sa described the process.
Meanwhile, Lu Weiyi leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, massaging his brow.
Compared to controlling actions, controlling suicide was harder—as if some instinct resisted the control.
Still too weak.
Lu Weiyi gathered a burst of mental energy inside the zombie’s brain. It expanded instantly, and the collapsed zombie exploded like a planted bomb in its head—“bang”—turning into a headless corpse.
Rotting flesh and bones flew everywhere, causing several people eating buns nearby to gag and scold Xu Sa.
“Hey, I didn’t make you watch this. Besides, who would know this thing would explode?” Xu Sa defended himself, arguing with the others.
Antonio and Li Zhuang glanced over curiously, then looked at Lu Weiyi resting with closed eyes in the corner. Receiving no response, they exchanged a look as if sharing some unspoken message, then returned to their spots to rest.
In the following days, all sorts of strange zombie phenomena appeared. Sometimes they would dig pits in groups as if searching for something, occasionally attacking each other. After watching this for a while, Xu Sa roughly realized it was mental abilities controlling them.
Lu Weiyi, who remained indifferent, became the most suspicious.
Before he could ask anything, Xu Sa found his own body was no longer under his control.
His eyes darted around wildly; his body felt like it was pressed down by a thousand pounds; his mouth couldn’t open.
He could hear conversations nearby, and if he hadn’t seen the scene, he would have thought he was experiencing some kind of sleep paralysis or possession.
“Uhh—uhh—” he tried to make sounds from his throat, like a small beast groaning, but his voice was drowned out by the men’s chatter.
Xu Sa began to suspect that this continuous strange phenomenon was caused by another mental user. If it were an ability user, it would be less risky, but if it was a zombie…
Cold sweat broke out on Xu Sa’s forehead. His eyes rolled wildly, trying to draw attention while fighting against the control with all his might.
“Brother Sa… Sa?” Liu Rui came back from the restroom, intending to joke around with Xu Sa as usual, but turning, he found Xu Sa slumped and unresponsive. Moving closer, he immediately knew something was wrong.
Before anyone else was alerted, Lu Weiyi instantly lifted the control.
Xu Sa suddenly found he could move again. Breathing heavily, he was about to warn others when Lu Weiyi, still with his eyes closed, opened them and looked over calmly, saying softly, “Go to sleep.”
“I…” Xu Sa was terrified.
“Go to sleep!” Lu Weiyi repeated.
Meeting Lu Weiyi’s smiling gaze, Xu Sa seemed to understand something. He pointed at Lu Weiyi and nodded, biting his teeth in frustration.
Antonio and Li Zhuang lowered their heads and chuckled quietly.
“You guys…?” Xu Sa looked at them in surprise, then at the other teammates. Luckily, the others also looked puzzled; otherwise, Xu Sa might have thought they were all in on it together.
“You’re just too easy to mess with. We’re fine,” Antonio smugly waved his hand, as if saying “it’s your own problem.”
Lu Weiyi had indeed first experimented on Li Zhuang and Antonio. Both had high resistance and alertness. No matter how he masked his mental power, even the slightest trace would alert them. With their defenses up, it was temporarily impossible to control them.
So Lu Weiyi had to pick the weakest mental in the team—Xu Sa.
Xu Sa pointed a finger at Lu Weiyi, noticing his pale face and guessing his powers were almost depleted. Speechless for a moment, before he could say anything, Lu Weiyi suddenly sat up straight, “Someone’s approaching.”
Just as he spoke, the night guard poked his head in and said to Lu Weiyi, “Team leader, a large force is approaching from the west, bringing many zombies. The captain asked if we should rescue them?”
“How many people?” Lu Weiyi stood up. The overuse of his powers made him stagger, but Li Zhuang quickly caught him, helping him stand straight.
“Over fifty vehicles, unknown number of people, and even more zombies,” came Li Yan’s voice from the rooftop. “Seems… no abilities.”
