Chapter 90: Joint Assault
When Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe heard Zheng Jiahe’s voice, they were instantly overjoyed—Dongdong had actually found that Level-Four zombie!
“Where is it?!”
Zheng Jiahe quickly asked Zheng Yaohua for a high-intensity flashlight and, following Yu Dongdong’s directions, aimed it at the Level-Four zombie hidden among the horde.
The Level-Four zombie had no legs and was extremely emaciated, looking like half a skeleton. Its rotting flesh hung loosely from its bones, and it moved entirely by crawling with its claws. Its eyes were blood-red, streaked with specks of black, making it look utterly terrifying.
When the beam of the flashlight hit it, the crimson pupils widened sharply. The zombie immediately retreated into the horde behind it. Lacking legs, its body was very low to the ground, and once it disappeared into tens of thousands of zombies, it became impossible to spot again.
Even though Yu Dongdong had already placed a mental mark on it and could quickly locate its position, by the time he informed Zheng Jiahe and Zheng Jiahe redirected the flashlight, it would often have already slipped away again.
What should they do?
At that moment, Zheng Jiahe noticed Wu Jing standing beside him. Her ability was extremely special—although it lacked offensive power, it could prove unexpectedly useful in many situations.
Zheng Jiahe’s overactive imagination kicked in again, and he came up with a very workable plan.
“Sister Jing, we have to lock onto that Level-Four zombie so Brother Zhan and Xiao Zhe can deal with it. I have an idea, but I need your help. Are you willing to give it a try?” Zheng Jiahe asked Wu Jing.
“I am.” Without even hearing the details of the plan, Wu Jing agreed without hesitation.
Her ability wasn’t as directly useful as the others’. Everyone else was fighting and slaughtering zombies, while she could only stand by and watch—it was incredibly frustrating. She desperately wanted to help.
“I’ll use the flashlight to pinpoint the general area. You drift over near that zombie and try to stay right on it, okay?”
“No problem!” Wu Jing replied immediately.
She leapt off the city wall at once. Before her body even hit the ground, it had completely transformed into mist, rapidly drifting toward the area illuminated by the flashlight.
The Level-Four zombie soon picked up the scent of a human and began looking around restlessly, even driving ordinary zombies to claw wildly in all directions. Unfortunately for it, because Wu Jing’s body was in a mist form, the zombies couldn’t harm her at all. No matter how strong they were or how sharp their claws, they couldn’t touch her.
After locating the Level-Four zombie, Wu Jing floated upward, stretching her mist-formed body and condensing it into a thick cloud. It became extremely conspicuous, as if she had placed a marker right above the zombie’s head.
The zombie seemed to sense the danger and tried once again to flee under the cover of other zombies, but Wu Jing followed it like a shadow, hovering persistently above its head.
Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe both spotted Wu Jing’s marker and immediately charged toward the Level-Four zombie’s position.
As Zhan Yun moved, the gravity field he had constructed moved with him, like a massive bulldozer, crushing every zombie in his path into bloody paste.
Su Ruizhe was no less formidable. As he ran, he continuously burned zombies with his gourd flame gun and hurled cherry bombs in all directions. Large swathes of zombies fell one after another.
Once Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe drew close, the Level-Four zombie finally stopped fleeing. It smelled something incredibly delicious. Its instincts told it that if it ate them, it would become even stronger.
“Roar—ROAR—ROAR!!!”
The zombie let out a howl. Unlike the hoarse, grating sounds of ordinary zombies, this one’s scream was piercingly shrill—unbearably unpleasant.
Several zombies around it seemed to be stimulated by the sharp shriek. They all went berserk, roaring deafeningly as a dazzling red light burst from their pupils. The red glow enveloped their heads, then spread to their bodies.
“Watch out!”
A powerful energy fluctuation made Su Ruizhe keenly aware of imminent danger. At top speed, he produced two walnut blast shields and placed them in front of himself and Zhan Yun.
The next moment, the zombies shrouded in red light exploded!
The shockwave from the blast completely dispersed Wu Jing’s mist-formed body in midair. Although being forcibly scattered felt awful, it wasn’t enough to actually injure her.
Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe, who took the explosion head-on, were far less fortunate. Not only were they thrown flying by the blast wave, even the blast shields in their hands shattered. Many nearby zombies were also caught in the explosion, blown to pieces. All that remained on the ground was a massive crater, a clear testament to the sheer power of the blast.
Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe felt intense pain in their chests and spat out mouthfuls of blood. They immediately realized that the self-destruction of those zombies was anything but ordinary. It had likely been triggered by the Level-Four zombie’s shriek, detonating the crystal cores in their heads. An explosion fueled by crystal core energy was immensely powerful—if Su Ruizhe hadn’t reacted in time with the walnut shields, the two of them would probably have ended up just like those zombies, blown apart into pieces.
“Brother Zhan!!! Xiao Zhe!!!”
Seeing the two of them coughing up blood, the team members on the city wall were beside themselves with rage and fear.
Zhang Shuoliang could no longer care about anything else. He pulled out an ability-enhancing potion and downed it in one gulp. His power surged instantly, his body rapidly becoming encased in a hard layer of stone. He jumped off the city wall and charged forward in great strides.
Cheng Qi and Cheng Jiao followed suit, drinking their ability potions and leaping down as well, their abilities enveloping their bodies. The onlookers saw a tornado and a spinning ball of lightning racing forward at high speed.
Song Chengshu and Zheng Jiahe were not to be left behind. They too drank their potions and hurried after them. A layer of solid ice formed around Song Chengshu, encasing his entire body. Zheng Jiahe, though merely a strength-type ability user, was now immensely powerful—he tore a rectangular slab of stone weighing two to three hundred jin straight off the city wall and swung it with tremendous force, smashing every zombie that tried to approach into pulp.
As the members of Zhan Yun’s team leapt off the city wall one after another like dumplings into boiling water, the people of the Northwest Base were utterly astonished. But when they saw those abilities unleashed at full power, even astonishment no longer felt sufficient.
These people… are they even human anymore?
“Roar—ROAR—ROAR!!!”
The Level-Four zombie continued its piercing shriek. Several more zombies that were advancing toward Su Ruizhe and Zhan Yun suddenly burst with that eerie red light in their eyes.
Su Ruizhe and Zhan Yun had been injured by the energy shockwaves from the crystal core explosions and were temporarily unable to move. Seeing those zombies about to self-destruct again, Su Ruizhe tried to create two more walnut blast shields—but he was seized by a wave of dizziness. A heavy sense of exhaustion washed over his body, the unmistakable sign of post-effect weakness after the ability-enhancing potion wore off.
Time was up…
Zhan Yun had taken the potion even earlier than Su Ruizhe and was likewise completely drained. Watching the red-lit zombies approach right up to them, he tightly clasped Su Ruizhe’s hand. Su Ruizhe gripped back just as firmly, ready to use spatial escape at any moment.
Exposing their spatial ability was better than losing their lives.
But unexpectedly, a thick earthen wall suddenly rose from the ground in front of them, followed by a curtain of water that enveloped the two of them.
The earthen wall was blasted to pieces by the explosion, but aside from being showered with bits of stone debris, Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe were completely unharmed. The water curtain, meanwhile, blocked the energy shockwave from the blast.
They looked up—and sure enough, their teammates had arrived!
“Brother Zhan, Xiao Zhe, hurry and use the sunflower lamp to heal yourselves. Leave the rest to us!” Zheng Jiahe said with a smile.
Both of them were deeply moved. Zhan Yun reminded them gravely, “Be careful of its shriek. It can trigger the crystal cores in low-level zombies to explode. You must kill them before they detonate!”
From his observations, the Level-Four zombie’s ability was limited—it could only cause three or four zombies to self-destruct at a time. Its body was far too fragile, so it relied entirely on sound to control them. The zombies it attracted were all like walking time bombs; once activated, they would explode. No wonder that after advancing to Level Five, it could wipe out an entire base in one fell swoop—it was essentially fighting humanity with tens of thousands of self-propelled bombs.
Killing those zombies before they self-destructed was the only way to stop the explosions.
“Got it. No problem.”
Zhang Shuoliang erected a circular, eggshell-like barrier made of earth and stone, enclosing Zhan Yun and Su Ruizhe inside. It both protected them and blocked the view of the people from the Northwest Base.
“Hmph! You useless thing that only knows how to scream—next I’ll make sure you never scream again!”
Song Chengshu and Zheng Jiahe attacked the Level-Four zombie together, forcing it to flee desperately while letting out shrill cries.
But whenever any zombie’s eyes lit up red, Cheng Qi and Cheng Jiao would immediately strike with electric arcs and wind blades, killing them on the spot. Before those zombies could self-destruct, they were already beheaded.
At last, the Level-Four zombie sensed that things were going badly. It immediately changed its tone. All the zombies turned in unison toward the group and surged at them like a tidal wave. The small, low-profile Level-Four zombie seized the opportunity to burrow into the sea of zombies—and once again vanished without a trace.
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
