Chapter 70: Mental Shock
With a sharp thrust of his palm against an exposed concrete pillar, Jiang Jue’s entire body seemed to defy gravity, soaring directly toward the upper landing with astonishing speed and fluid grace!
Chu Yang’s heart skipped a beat. Whatever could make Brother Jiang react with such urgency was definitely no ordinary creature!
Without a second thought, the energy within him surged. With what seemed like an effortless step, his figure eerily warped across several meters, following close behind.
Before vanishing up the stairs, he only had time to call out to the floor below: “Old Lin, keep Little Yu and the others safe!”
Before his words had even faded, his silhouette had disappeared above the staircase.
Lin Xiao had just cleanly wrenched his straight blade from the eye socket of the last ordinary zombie, warm, black blood splattering across his cheek. Looking up at the shout, he saw only an empty stairwell—Jiang Jue and Chu Yang were already gone.
“Damn it!” he muttered under his breath. He looked down at the shaken survivors, then at the vigilant Su Mubai and Li Yu, and finally back toward the upper floors. Gritting his teeth, he barked in a hushed, steady voice, “Little Bai, Li Yu, take the kids into the inner corner! Don’t wander off!”
“Wang Qiang, cover the main entrance and the bottom of the stairs. Don’t let any stragglers slip out!”
“As for upstairs… leave that to the Boss and Third Brother!”
Downstairs, Wang Li clutched her daughter tightly against her chest. Her face was as pale as paper, her limbs still trembling with aftershocks of terror.
Just moments ago, when the zombies ambushed them, she had happened to drift closer to the corner near Li Yu’s group, inadvertently avoiding the main brunt of the assault.
Her heart pounded violently against her ribs, as though it might burst from her throat at any second.
Li Yu hurried over to Wang Li’s side, crouching down and whispering gently, “Sister Li, are you alright? Did you get hurt anywhere?”
Wang Li shook her head numbly, her lips trembling so hard she couldn’t form a complete sentence.
She glanced up toward the ceiling, her eyes filled with lingering dread and profound gratitude.
Meanwhile, the other survivors descended into chaotic squabbling.
Xiao Chen’s body lay in a pool of dark blood not far away, the warm crimson liquid slowly seeping along the cracks between the floor tiles. His bulging backpack was pinned beneath his chest, its zipper half-open to reveal the metallic rims of canned meat and biscuit wrappers.
Once the initial shock and horror of seeing a companion fall had passed, a dark, opportunistic greed began to fester among the survivors.
After a brief, suffocating silence, a gaunt man made the first move.
Hunching his shoulders, his eyes darted around warily. After confirming that no one was watching him, he crouched low and scuttled over to Xiao Chen’s corpse.
He gripped the bloodstained strap of the backpack and gave it a hard yank.
“What are you doing?!” someone asked, their voice carrying a faint, hypocritical hesitation.
“What does it look like I’m doing?” The gaunt man didn’t even look up, continuing to haul the bag free. His voice was raspy, like coarse sandpaper. “The guy’s dead! Should we leave good food to rot for the zombies? If we don’t take it, are we supposed to just sit here and starve to death?”
With a violent tug, he wrenched the pack from under the corpse and ripped the zipper open.
Amidst the metallic clatter of colliding tins, he frantically stuffed the canned meat and compressed biscuits into his own jacket.
The surrounding survivors exchanged brief, conflicted glances.
Their fleeting moral hesitation dissolved like thin ice under the raw, desperate pressure of survival.
Two or three more people couldn’t hold back any longer; they rushed forward, hands clawing at the remaining rations in the pack.
Someone even knelt beside the body, hastily searching Xiao Chen’s cold pockets for any hidden supplies.
“Don’t hog it all! Share it! Everyone gets a cut!” a burly man snarled, throwing a sharp elbow into the person beside him as he snatched a pack of dry biscuits and shoved a mouthful down his throat.
“These rations are mine! Don’t you dare touch them!”
“Water! There’s bottled water too! Leave me a bottle!”
Hushed arguments and ragged breathing mingled with the smell of fresh blood and dust, polluting the air.
No one looked at the cooling corpse on the floor anymore; no one seemed to remember that just minutes earlier, this young man named Xiao Chen had walked alongside them, searching for the exact same shred of hope.
Up on the fourth floor, Jiang Jue came to a halt in the middle of a trashed, partitioned office space.
He didn’t advance immediately. He simply stood motionless, holding his straight blade angled toward the floor, every muscle in his frame coiled with razor-sharp tension. His mental power extended outward like an invisible web, meticulously scanning every corner of the floor.
That creature was blindingly fast, and it carried a bizarre energy frequency that warped his senses.
Chu Yang materialized silently at his flank, his gaze just as sharp as he surveyed the murky gloom.
“Brother Jiang?” Chu Yang murmured under his breath.
“Stay sharp.” Jiang Jue offered only two words, his voice carrying a deep, quiet gravity.
Before the warning had fully landed, his gaze snapped toward the heavy shadows behind a cluster of overturned filing cabinets on the left!
Almost in the exact same heartbeat, Jiang Jue struck!
With a flick of his wrist, his straight blade erupted into an arc of purple lightning that tore through the air. Devoid of flashy flourishes, it cleaved down toward the darkness with the sheer weight of a thunderbolt!
Clang—!
The seemingly empty air warped and rippled violently. A gaunt, grotesquely jointed silhouette was forcefully torn from its cloaked state by the sheer impact of the strike!
The creature was covered in hardened, slate-gray skin, its limbs twisted at unnatural angles. It had crossed its forearms in front of its chest, its razor-sharp talons bracing directly against Jiang Jue’s blade!
Under the crushing force of the blow, the monster stumbled back several paces, shattering the floor tiles beneath its feet.
Yet instead of retreating, the crimson slit pupils of the creature flared with vicious intensity. Opening its maw, it unleashed a soundless, high-frequency screech, sending visible shockwaves rippling across the room!
Chu Yang felt his head spin with sudden vertigo, his mental focus fracturing under the psychic wave.
Gritting his teeth to steady his balance, he shouted a warning: “Brother Jiang, watch out! This thing can disrupt our senses—it’s a Mental Shock!”
The mutant zombie moved with terrifying agility. The moment it regained its footing, it blurred into a gray shadow, completely abandoning a predictable, straight-line charge.
Vaulting across shattered desks and chairs, it navigated a treacherous zigzag path, using the collapsed cubicle walls and metal cabinets as cover. Flickering in and out of sight from the left and right, it lunged toward Jiang Jue, bringing with it a thick, suffocating stench of decay.
Jiang Jue’s eyes turned icy, the aura around him turning razor-sharp.
Without moving his feet an inch, he gave his wrist a subtle twist, shifting his downward chop into a sweeping horizontal slash.
A blinding burst of purple lightning detonated along the steel edge, roaring outward like a furious thunder serpent accompanied by a powerful shockwave!
The sprawling arc of electricity accurately blanketed every possible angle of the creature’s advance, completely cutting off any room for evasion!
Yet the mutant was exceptionally cunning. At the critical moment, it kicked off an overturned metal cabinet at its flank.
Using the leverage in mid-air, its torso folded backward at a physically impossible angle, narrowly dodging the sweeping lightning arc.
Simultaneously, its talon-tipped legs snapped forward like coiled steel springs, kicking violently straight toward Jiang Jue’s face!
