Chapter 93: How About We Scour the Area?
Jiang Lin, who had been leaning quietly against the door, idly traced the window frame with her fingertips. Sensing the lingering tension in the air, she spoke up at the right moment to pivot away from the awkward topic: “By the way, Li Yu, where does your Water Ability stand right now? Have you broken through to Tier 2 yet?”
Mentioning her elemental power immediately drew Li Yu’s focus, and a bright smile returned to her face. Waving her hand, she condensed a small, crystal-clear sphere of water above her fingertips, letting it wobble gently in the air. “Not yet. I’m sitting right at the peak of Tier 1.”
“Brother Chu gave me some advice yesterday, though,” Li Yu continued with an eager gleam in her eye. “He said Water users shouldn’t just think of themselves as mobile drinking fountains. We need to explore new combat applications. If we train our control to a high enough level, we can develop real offensive techniques—things like pressurized water blades or condensed piercing arrows! The lethal force would be incredible.”
Jiang Lin’s eyes lit up, and she leaned forward with genuine curiosity. “Really? Chu Yang actually told you that?”
“He sure did!” Li Yu’s voice rose with growing excitement. “Brother Chu explained that while water seems soft and yielding on the surface, its destructive force is terrifying when concentrated—even steady drips can hollow out stone! We have to find ways to harden and shape our power. We can’t just be passive water tanks; we need to be able to protect ourselves when things get ugly!”
Gripping the steering wheel, Wang Qiang kept his eyes glued to the dark road ahead. Catching their conversation in the rearview mirror, he chimed in with a deep, approving rumble: “Brother Chu makes a lot of sense.”
“Abilities are just like physical muscles,” Wang Qiang added. “They have to be exercised, pushed to their limits, and refined through constant practice to grow stronger. Li Yu, Miss Jiang, you two should brainstorm ideas together and spar when we have downtime.”
The three young survivors immediately fell into an animated discussion on ability control and training methods. The atmosphere inside the cabin quickly turned relaxed and lively once more, and even the cool breeze from the air vents felt pleasant.
Wang Li cradled her daughter, gently patting the child’s back to the steady rhythm of their voices. The stray, ambitious thought that had briefly sprouted in her mind was now thoroughly extinguished.
Looking down at her daughter’s peaceful, sleeping face, she gave herself a stern, silent reminder: Wang Li, oh Wang Li… the fact that you and Niu Niu survived, found a powerful squad to take you in, and have guaranteed meals every day is already a miracle.
Don’t get greedy, and don’t daydream about things that aren’t meant for you. Just focus on cooking honest meals, taking good care of Niu Niu, and being a dependable part of this team. That’s the only path you need to walk.
Night spread across the sky like spilled black ink. After the convoy had covered roughly thirty kilometers of cracked highway, the jagged silhouette of an urban skyline loomed ahead.
Judging by its footprint, it was a modest, third-tier county city.
However, the moment the vehicles crossed into the city limits, a chorus of hoarse, frenzied shrieks echoed from the gloom. Dozens of shadowy figures lunged from behind crumbling brick walls and abandoned cars, sprinting and stumbling directly toward the moving convoy!
At the head of the line, Jiang Jue didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second. His dark eyes narrowed into lethal slits as he slammed his foot flat against the accelerator. The heavy armored RV let out a guttural roar, plowing into the surging undead like a rampaging steel beast!
Crash! Bang! Crunch!
A series of violent, sickening impacts rang out in rapid succession. Seven or eight zombies in the front row were hurled through the air, the sharp snaps of breaking bones clearly audible over the engine’s roar as their mangled bodies rolled onto the asphalt.
The violent jolting jolted Chu Yang awake from where he had been resting in the front seat.
Rubbing his eyes groggily, his voice was thick with sleep: “Brother Jiang…?”
“Yangyang, get out of the car,” Jiang Jue commanded. His voice had returned to its razor-sharp calm, laced with the chilling edge of battle-ready focus.
Unbuckling his seatbelt with practiced ease, Jiang Jue pushed his door open.
Chu Yang snapped to full alertness on the spot, every trace of sleepiness evaporating in a heartbeat.
Kicking into his boots, he vaulted out of the RV, falling into step right beside Jiang Jue.
Across the tarmac, Lin Xiao, Wang Qiang, and the others were already clashing with the outer ring of the horde. The sharp clang of steel, the crackle of unleashed abilities, and the guttural roars of the undead clashed in a chaotic symphony.
Using the glare of the high beams and the pale moonlight, Chu Yang swiftly assessed the battlefield.
There were over thirty of them—mostly common zombies that had been drawn from the surrounding apartment complexes by the roar of the convoy’s engines.
Glancing down at his light shorts and T-shirt, Chu Yang couldn’t be bothered to draw his blade and get covered in filth. He simply stood his ground, his eyes narrowing as his spatial energy flared to life.
Spatial Strangulation!
Centering on his position, an invisible force field erupted outward in a wide, fan-shaped arc. The five or six zombies lunging toward him froze mid-stride, as though trapped in the crushing grip of a colossal hand. A heartbeat later, their skulls and ribcages imploded inward with sickening, wet pops. Dark, putrid blood sprayed across the pavement as their corpses dropped simultaneously.
Almost in the exact same breath, Jiang Jue struck.
Without a single wasted movement, he raised his right hand, long fingers splayed wide as violent arcs of blue-purple lightning crackled across his skin.
In the next second, several thick bolts of lightning—each as wide as a child’s arm—ripped through the night like furious dragons, slamming directly into another cluster of charging zombies!
BOOM—!
The lightning detonated with concussive force. Before the creatures could even screech, the blinding plasma reduced them to charred, smoking husks. They collapsed heavily to the ground, trailing wisps of blue smoke and filling the air with the pungent stench of scorched flesh.
Not wanting to be outdone, Lin Xiao sent several gleaming steel spikes whistling through the air, punching cleanly through the eye sockets and temples of flanking zombies, dropping them instantly.
Chu Yang, however, wasn’t watching the melee on the ground. His attention was caught by a bizarre movement scaling the exterior wall of a five-story building across the street.
A mutant zombie was scrambling up the vertical brickwork using all four limbs, moving with the unnatural speed and agility of an overgrown gecko. It was already nearing the third-floor balcony, poised to slip through a shattered window frame!
“Whoa! Look at that one—it mutated into a gecko-man!” Chu Yang called out.
Jiang Jue’s gaze snapped toward the climbing figure, a flash of cold lethality in his eyes.
Pressing his index and middle fingers together, he condensed a brilliant, pinpoint needle of pure lightning at his fingertips, then flicked his wrist toward the wall!
Zip—crack!
A hair-thin thread of purple plasma cut through the darkness with blinding speed, drilling straight through the back of the gecko zombie’s skull.
The creature instantly went rigid, all strength fleeing its splayed limbs. Plummeting from a height of nearly ten meters, it smashed into the concrete with a heavy thud, gave two feeble twitches, and went completely still.
Back when they were at Tier 2, dealing with mutated variants had required careful coordination and effort. Now that they had both stepped into Tier 3, the power gap had widened drastically. Cutting down common zombies and lower-tier mutants was as effortless as slicing through ripe melons.
“Brother Jiang!” Chu Yang’s eyes sparkled. Leaning close to Jiang Jue, he whispered with undisguised excitement and greedy ambition, “Since we’ve already cleared this street and it’s too dark to push further on the highway… how about we scour the surrounding district for more?”
His mind was completely fixated on harvesting crystal cores.
Common Tier 1 cores were barely moving the needle for him and Jiang Jue now, and the spatial-attribute cores he desperately needed to advance his own rank were exceptionally rare, demanding massive energy reserves for his next breakthrough.
In Chu Yang’s eyes, every single zombie lurking in the dark was a walking, breathing treasure chest!
Seeing the youth’s eager expression—practically vibrating with excitement—a flicker of warm indulgence softened Jiang Jue’s eyes, though his voice remained steady and grounded: “Alright. Stay close to me, and keep your guard up.”
