Chapter 72: Mutant Wolf Pack
Back at the inn, with nothing to do, Zhan Yun took off his shirt and started doing push-ups on the floor. Firm muscles rose and fell beneath his skin, and Su Ruizhe watched from the side, utterly transfixed. When Zhan Yun finished over a hundred push-ups in one go and climbed back to his feet, drenched in sweat, he saw his little lover standing there in a daze and couldn’t help but laugh.
“Hey, silly—what are you staring at?” Zhan Yun said with a grin, leaning over and flicking Su Ruizhe on the nose.
Up close, Zhan Yun’s physique looked even more perfect: eight-pack abs, a narrow, powerful waist, and long legs—pure overflowing hormones. Especially now, fresh from exercise, with sweat beading on his muscles, he was indescribably sexy.
“I—I wasn’t looking at anything…” Su Ruizhe’s face flushed bright red in an instant. He hurriedly looked away and blurted out, “You must really want to take a shower, right? I—I’ll go ask Brother Song to get the water ready for you!” Then he dashed off.
Watching Su Ruizhe’s flustered retreat, Zhan Yun chuckled and shook his head. His little lover was still young—far too shy.
Before long, Song Chengshu came by to draw water for Zhan Yun, thoughtfully setting it to hot so he could enjoy a comfortable warm shower.
During the day, everyone slept to make up for lost rest. That night, Zhan Yun and the others followed their original plan and went outside the base to look for supplies.
Guan Hong and Dr. Yang remained in the base, continuing their contact with the local garrison. As for the information about the new bullets and the fruit-and-vegetable juice, they decided to wait until Zhan Yun’s group returned.
Guan Hong’s decision was a two-pronged approach. If Zhan Yun and the others managed to find supplies, they would proceed as planned—trading supplies for the soilless cultivation technology, then sharing their information with the local garrison. On the other hand, he also had to be prepared for the possibility that they might come back empty-handed; if that happened, they would have no choice but to trade information for the technology.
Zhan Yun’s team might not be able to find enough supplies nearby. This area was all under W City’s control and had likely been picked clean several times over. The chances of finding sufficient supplies were slim. They would probably have to go farther out to gain anything—and in more distant areas, zombies hadn’t been cleared, making them far more troublesome to deal with.
But Zhan Yun’s team was exceptionally strong, and Guan Hong trusted their abilities completely.
So he decided that no matter what, they would wait for Zhan Yun’s return before taking the next step.
Guan Hong handed over the keys to two military trucks to Zhan Yun’s group, in case they found supplies but had no way to transport them back.
Zhan Yun didn’t refuse the gesture. He accepted the keys and set off, fully confident that they would return with enough supplies. Even if they couldn’t find sufficient goods nearby, didn’t they still have Su Ruizhe’s space?
There were still plenty of cigarettes, alcohol, and similar items stored in the space. In W City Base, those were quite valuable. They weren’t particularly useful to them anyway—if worse came to worst, they could use those to make up the difference.
At the base gate, there were many other teams also preparing to head out in search of supplies. They belonged to various ability teams and set out in force, with impressive numbers. In the harsh environment of W City Base, anyone with even a bit of fighting ability chose to attach themselves to an ability-user team, relying on daily supply runs just to fill their stomachs.
When those people saw Zhan Yun’s pitifully small team, they immediately took notice. The group might be small, but every single one of them was an ability user—even the child among them had a red badge pinned to his chest.
Zhan Yun’s group ignored the stares and walked straight to the military trucks, unlocking the doors with the keys. He and Cheng Qi each took the driver’s seat of a truck, one in front of the other, and drove out of the base.
They picked a road at random and followed it outward. None of them were familiar with the W City area anyway, so it didn’t matter much which way they went.
“A-Zhan, there are a lot of vehicles following us,” Cheng Qi said after checking the rearview mirror, speaking into the walkie-talkie.
“Heh. If they want to follow, let them,” Zhan Yun sneered, continuing forward.
He knew the area around the base had long since been thoroughly scavenged. If he wanted any real gains, he’d have to go farther—ideally to places with more zombies. Only areas like that might not have been looted yet.
But to his surprise, even after driving more than thirty kilometers, plenty of vehicles were still trailing behind them. It seemed they were all hoping to take advantage of his team.
W City was an agricultural city, so the surrounding area was dotted with farming villages. Now, however, those villages were lifeless. The once-lush fields had all withered under the blazing sun, turning into vast stretches of barren land. When the headlights swept over them, all that could be seen was dead grass.
“Brother… there’s something over there…” Yu Dongdong suddenly sat upright, pointing with his small hand toward the pitch-black fields ahead on the right.
Hearing that, Su Ruizhe immediately focused his gaze in that direction. But it was too dark to see clearly—only a few faint, greenish glimmers could be made out, hidden among the dead grass.
“What is that?” Zheng Jiahe leaned over to peer out the window as well.
“I don’t know…” Before Su Ruizhe could finish, Yu Dongdong suddenly tugged at him and turned to look behind them.
“Brother! It’s them!”
As soon as Yu Dongdong finished speaking, a black shadow shot out of the grass at high speed, leaped into the air, and pounced straight onto the vehicle Cheng Qi was driving.
The truck Cheng Qi was in felt as if it had been rammed by an elephant. It completely lost balance and veered off to the side. Fortunately, the surroundings were all farmland—otherwise, a serious traffic accident would have been inevitable.
Seeing this, Zhan Yun immediately slammed on the brakes, turned the front of his vehicle around, and chased after them.
Under the powerful headlights, they all saw clearly what had leapt onto the truck.
It was a wolf.
Its frame was broad and solid, its fur matted and unkempt, and its body thin—but from its skeleton alone, it was obvious that it had once been extremely strong. Its pair of eerie green eyes gleamed with bloodlust, locked tightly onto the people inside the vehicle.
“Awooo!” The wolf lifted its head and let out a howl.
Immediately afterward, wolves began emerging from the surrounding fields—one after another.
Big and small, there were more than twenty of them.
Behind Cheng Qi’s truck, there were also many other vehicles that had likewise been knocked off the road and into the fields.
“Mutant wolves!” Only a mutated wolf pack could possess such tremendous strength and such high intelligence.
“Hahaha! We’ve struck it rich!” The people who had been tailing them, hoping to scavenge some easy gains, burst out laughing as they flung open their car doors, jumped out, and raised their guns.
The meat of mutated animals was all edible—and exceptionally delicious. In this apocalypse, people had no idea how long it had been since they’d last tasted meat. Now, with so many mutant wolves right in front of them, if they killed them all and brought the meat back, who knew how many supplies it could be exchanged for? Wouldn’t that be the same as striking it rich?
But were mutant wolf packs really that easy to deal with?
Even before the apocalypse, hunters would feel uneasy encountering an ordinary wolf pack—let alone these clearly mutated wolves.
The instant one of those men raised his gun to fire, a wolf lunged at him with explosive speed, fast, precise, and ruthless, clamping its jaws around his throat.
“Awooo—awooo—awoooo!” The scent of blood stimulated the pack. All the wolves bared their fangs, vicious green light flashing in their eyes as they lowered their bodies into attack stances.
People poured out of their vehicles—some spraying machine-gun fire, others attacking with weapons—but these wolves seemed almost supercharged, each one astonishingly fast. One person after another was knocked down and bitten to death.
Human screams, beastly roars, and the crack of gunfire blended together without end…
The wolf perched on Cheng Qi’s truck let out a low growl toward the people inside. It raked its claws viciously across the vehicle, carving out a deep gash with ease—those claws were practically steel blades.
“Tsk!” They couldn’t let that wolf keep attacking the truck. This was military equipment—if it got damaged, there’d be no way to explain it to Guan Hong.
Seeing this, Cheng Qi quickly lowered the window and activated his ability. A finger-thick bolt of blue lightning shot from his fingertips and struck the wolf outside.
“Awooo!” The wolf let out a shrill cry and tumbled off the hood.
Cheng Qi hurriedly reversed, trying to get back onto the road, only to discover that the ground here was inexplicably muddy. The wheels sank in and refused to budge.
What was going on? With days of extreme heat, ordinary farmland should have dried up and cracked long ago—how could the ground still be this muddy?
Unless… these wolves had abilities of their own?
As that thought crossed his mind, the wolf that had just been electrocuted struggled back to its feet. Baring its teeth, it let out a low snarl at Cheng Qi and then lunged fiercely at the truck again. Even the reinforced windshield shattered with spiderweb cracks under the sheer force of the impact.
Cheng Jiao immediately got out of the vehicle and unleashed wind blades at the wolf. The razor-sharp currents sliced through its flesh, but failed to kill it—instead, they only further provoked its ferocity.
“Awooo!”
Cheng Qi’s lightning struck again, repeatedly hammering the wolf’s head. With Cheng Jiao’s wind blades providing support, the wolf was unable to get close, and finally collapsed to the ground.
Even so, Cheng Qi and Cheng Jiao were utterly exhausted. Since awakening their abilities, this was the first time they had used them so completely.
Looking back, they saw that Wu Jing and Zhang Shuoliang were already fighting two wolves of their own. Wu Jing’s body flickered in and out of visibility, causing every attack from the wolves to miss. Zhang Shuoliang activated his ability as well, driving one razor-sharp earth spike after another straight into the wolves’ bodies.
The air was thick with the stench of blood…
It was said that wolves were especially afraid of fire. Unfortunately, none of them had fire abilities—otherwise, lighting a blaze might have sent these wolves fleeing long ago.
“Awooo—awooo—”
The pack had clearly realized that some of their own had died at human hands. Abandoning the weaker humans they had been attacking, the wolves began to close in on Zhan Yun and his group.
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
