Chapter 64: Level-Three Zombie
After Li Ming and the others finally regained their clarity of mind, they discovered that everything had already been taken care of. The fat man and his so-called “wife” were dead, and confessions had been extracted from the remaining young people. How these people were to be dealt with next would be up to Li Ming and his men.
Once they learned of Lu Yang’s background and motives, Li Ming and the others fell into silence.
These people had intended to rob the military—and they had harbored murderous intent. Though young, they were already ruthless and cruel. If Zhan Yun’s group had not been involved in this operation, then the ones lying there now as cold corpses might very well have been these soldiers instead.
“Please… please let us go…”
“We know we were wrong…”
“We’ll never dare do it again, wuwuwu…”
The young people were terrified, apologizing repeatedly. The two girls cried pitifully, tears streaming down their faces as they begged for mercy.
There were only two choices before them: kill them, or let them go.
Letting them go was absolutely impossible. These youths might look young, but in reality they had helped Lu Yang commit many crimes; their hands were already stained with the blood of countless innocent people. To release them would be tantamount to letting a tiger return to the mountains—who knew how many more innocents might die because of a moment of softheartedness today?
Li Ming shut his eyes hard. When he opened them again, he had already made his decision.
“Take them out.”
“Yes.”
Several soldiers stepped forward, clamped hands over the crying youths’ mouths, and dragged them away.
The soldiers soon returned. The people were gone. Somewhere outside, something seemed to be burning—there was the faint smell of scorched flesh in the air. No one asked any questions. Everyone pretended not to have noticed anything.
The room fell quiet again. Wu Jing closed the glass doors once more and rehung the cloth to block the light. This time, they could finally get some proper rest.
When night came, everyone hastily ate a little food and set off again.
The service area was left with nothing but an empty business van and a patch of charred ashes.
—
At around two in the morning, the convoy saw the sign for G City.
“Once we pass the toll station ahead, we’ll be entering G City. Everyone stay alert—there is more than one evolved zombie in G City. It’s extremely dangerous,” Li Ming warned over the radio as they were about to enter the city, reminding everyone to be ready for combat at any moment.
G City was also completely without power. The convoy drove along the unlit roads, and from afar, the dark city looked like a bottomless abyss, slowly swallowing them whole.
“Turn left at the road ahead,” Li Ming said, flashlight in hand as he checked the map, guiding the convoy toward the location of the new energy plant.
“Stop! Stop now!” Zhan Yun’s sharp shout suddenly rang out over the radio.
The vehicles, which had been moving at a steady pace, slammed on the brakes at once. The piercing screech of braking tires stabbed painfully into everyone’s ears.
“Captain Zhan, what happened? Why are we stopping?” Thrown forward by inertia, Li Ming’s head slammed into the side of the vehicle. He had no time to worry about his injury and, gritting through the pain, grabbed the radio to urgently ask what had happened.
“Look outside!”
A sense of foreboding surged in Li Ming’s chest. He did as instructed and looked out the window. In the darkness, pairs of blood-red eyes glowed like crimson bulbs. At some unknown moment, they had fallen into a zombie encirclement.
“Reverse! Reverse now! Get out of here!” They were already inside the city, surrounded by buildings and narrow roads. Who knew how many zombies were hidden among them? They had to leave immediately and move to more open ground.
The driver immediately began reversing, but a burst of rapid gunfire suddenly rang out, stretching everyone’s nerves taut. Fighting had already broken out up ahead.
“What’s happening in front? Do you copy? Do you copy?!”
After a burst of crackling static, the only sounds that came through were shattering glass and the chilling screech of fingernails scraping against metal…
“Turn on the headlights! Everyone prepare for battle!” Startled, Li Ming immediately shouted the order.
Several lamps mounted outside the troop trucks lit up at once, flooding the previously pitch-black road with light like broad daylight. All the figures lurking in the darkness were instantly revealed.
Clearly, Li Ming’s unit was under attack and needed support.
“A-Qi, Jiao-Jiao, get out with me. Everyone else, stay in the vehicle,” Zhan Yun said, gripping his gun as he swiftly opened the door and jumped out.
Cheng Qi and Cheng Jiao followed immediately. The three of them moved forward quickly, backs to each other.
As they advanced, they fired continuously. Every shot precisely took down a zombie that tried to approach.
Just then, a loud bang suddenly sounded from the roof of the off-road vehicle, as if something had leapt onto it.
The next instant, a hand with blackened nails, iron-blue skin, and skin stretched tight over bone tore through the roof and plunged straight down inside!
Zheng Jiahe immediately swung his usual golf club with all his might, smashing it hard against the arm. If it had been an ordinary zombie, struck by a level-two strength-type ability user, its bones would have shattered completely. This zombie’s arm twisted awkwardly, the bones clearly dislocated but not fully broken, while Zheng Jiahe himself was jolted so hard that both his hands went numb.
“Holy shit! What the hell is this? Are this zombie’s bones made of rebar or something?” Zheng Jiahe couldn’t help but curse.
Su Ruizhe shuddered at the words. Hardened bones, toughened skin, enhanced strength—these were all effects of further evolution in zombies.
If the slow-moving, bluish-gray, relatively easy-to-deal-with zombies that first appeared were considered Level One zombies, then evolved zombies were Level Two. And what they were facing now was a zombie that had evolved yet again—a Level Three zombie!
This was no longer something an entry-level ability user could fight. Even for Zheng Jiahe, a Level Two ability user, it would be extremely difficult to deal with…
“Don’t get out of the car! Leave this zombie to me!” Su Ruizhe said to his companions.
After all, he was a Level Three ability user himself, and he still had plenty of plants he could control. This time, he didn’t want to keep hiding behind others. He believed he had the ability to protect the people he wanted to protect.
That hand reached into the car again, this time accurately grabbing toward Su Ruizhe.
A walnut appeared in Su Ruizhe’s left hand. As he activated his ability, a small, earthy-yellow shield materialized in his grasp, easily blocking the zombie’s attack.
At the same time, he reached out to open the car door and swiftly got out.
The zombie had clearly locked onto Su Ruizhe as its target and followed him, leaping down from the roof of the vehicle. It was a shriveled, mummy-like zombie, its entire face as terrifying as E.T. from the movies, with a bluish complexion and bared fangs that were truly horrifying.
Before the zombie even landed, Su Ruizhe raised the gun in his hand and fired, accurately hitting its body. The green bullet pierced through the zombie’s chest, but no blood flowed out—every bit of energy in its body had already been absorbed by the crystal core in its head.
“Roar!” The zombie seemed enraged. Its blood-red vertical pupils locked onto Su Ruizhe, as if it wanted nothing more than to tear him apart and devour him on the spot.
As it lunged at him, Su Ruizhe dodged left and right while firing three more shots in quick succession. Each of the zombie’s attacks was blocked by the walnut shield in Su Ruizhe’s hand.
After a continuous exchange of attacks, the effects of the pea bullets finally began to show. The Level Three zombie staggered slightly, and patches of its skin began to discolor.
“Roar! Roar! Roar!” The zombie let out a shrill howl. The surrounding zombies seemed to be stimulated by the sound and all swarmed toward Su Ruizhe in a frenzy.
Su Ruizhe, however, did not panic. Two cherry bombs appeared in his hands, and he threw them straight at the zombies.
The bombs exploded, leaving the ground littered with mangled corpses.
“Roar! Roar! Roar!” The zombie continued to howl incessantly.
Zombies kept pouring in from all directions, fearlessly charging straight toward Su Ruizhe, only to fall wave after wave.
Cold sweat gradually beaded on Su Ruizhe’s forehead. No matter how powerful his ability was, it could still be exhausted. Constantly converting plant weapons consumed an enormous amount of his energy. Fortunately, he had quite a few transparent crystal cores on him, which could replenish his depleted abilities in time.
There were simply too many zombies gathering. They kept crashing into the off-road vehicle. Zheng Jiahe and Zhang Shuoliang were both firing their guns in suppressive fire, but the rate at which they were killing them was far slower than the rate at which the zombies were converging.
This wouldn’t do. Too many zombies were gathering, and the others would be in danger. That Level Three zombie had to be dealt with first!
Su Ruizhe once again took out a small handful of emerald-green peas from his spatial storage and used his ability to fuse them into a single pea about the size of a quail’s egg, then transformed it into a bullet. This pea bullet was so green it practically glowed.
He discarded the already tattered walnut shield and charged straight toward the Level Three zombie.
Although the Level Three zombie sensed danger, it still couldn’t resist the sweet, alluring scent emanating from the human before it. It desperately craved this human’s flesh and blood, as if devouring him would make it even stronger.
Su Ruizhe raised his gun, aimed at the Level Three zombie’s body, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger once more.
The Level Three zombie was already right in front of him. He could smell the stench of rot from its mouth, and its black claws were just about to reach his neck…
Then, in the next instant, the Level Three zombie’s body rapidly began to decay. It let out a piercing wail before crashing to the ground.
Su Ruizhe pried open the Level Three zombie’s skull and took out an orange-red crystal core. After wiping it clean with a napkin, he stored it safely in his spatial storage.
With the Level Three zombie gone, the nearby zombies no longer surged toward them. Under the army’s concentrated firepower, they were quickly wiped out.
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