Chapter 147 — Human Nature
The five of them each carried a crossbow and a water gun. Around their waists hung ammunition pouches filled with replacement “magazines” of mushroom extract for the water guns, along with bolt pouches for their crossbows. Each also carried a backpack stuffed with extra bolts.
Around Yan Fei floated a mass of metal that followed him wherever he went.
Everyone wore waterproof raincoats, helmets, gloves, and rain boots.
They were armed practically to the teeth.
The group cautiously lightened their footsteps as they approached the iron gate between the fifteenth and fourteenth floors. After listening carefully and hearing no movement outside, they quietly opened one door. Confirming things still seemed silent, they opened the second layer as well.
For safety reasons, Yan Fei walked at the very front with a metal shield raised ahead of him.
His ability had only just advanced to level four, and he still hadn’t fully figured out all the changes after leveling up. But his control had clearly improved dramatically.
Actually, it wasn’t only Yan Fei who’d leveled up.
Xu Mei and Zhang Su had also reached level four.
Only Xiao Xinran and Song Lingling still lacked matching level-four crystal cores. Their powers had already reached saturation and only needed the proper cores to advance further.
After opening the doors, everyone quietly rounded the stairwell corner.
The windows here had already shattered completely.
Dark dried stains—possibly blood, possibly something else—covered the floor.
Icy wind howled in through the stairwell windows, making everyone shiver instinctively.
As they reached the entrance to the fourteenth floor and prepared to check the situation there first, Yan Fei cautiously led the way inward—
Suddenly, something slammed violently into the metal shield before him from behind the stairwell door!
CLANG!
The deafening sound echoed through the nearly silent hallway.
It became the signal igniting the battle.
Immediately, strange footsteps and the sound of flapping wings erupted from unknown rooms on the fourteenth floor and from other levels as well.
“Defend the stairwell side first! Prioritize clearing the zombie birds on the fourteenth floor!”
Luo Xun immediately issued combat instructions.
Before coming downstairs, Yan Fei had created large, dense metal shields for everyone—heavy but still manageable to carry.
At that moment, Luo Xun and Song Lingling planted their shields toward the stairwell entrance while Zhang Su, Yan Fei, and Xu Mei—the heavy hitters—focused on clearing the fourteenth-floor zombie birds.
Since Yan Fei stood at the front, he quickly grasped the general situation.
The doors to Apartments 1401 and 1404 stood wide open.
Several zombie birds hidden inside those rooms had been alerted by the noise in the hallway and rushed out.
Although Apartment 1402’s door remained shut, loud noises could be heard inside after the hallway commotion began.
And after listening carefully, everyone became certain—
Those definitely weren’t human sounds.
As for Apartment 1403, the door remained tightly closed with no audible movement, leaving its situation unknown.
CLANG. CLANG.
Heavy impacts struck the shields Luo Xun and Song Lingling held.
Both crouched low and braced themselves desperately against the repeated collisions.
Luo Xun pulled out the modified water gun slung over his shoulder, ready to spray mushroom extract the instant anything broke through.
Yet he still had time to chat casually with Song Lingling.
“They’re pretty fast. Already rushing up here this quickly.”
Song Lingling strained against her shield and twitched the corner of her mouth.
“They’re probably starving…”
Meanwhile, Zhang Su’s wind ability carried Xu Mei’s increasingly tiny—but increasingly terrifying—fireballs throughout the fourteenth-floor hallway.
His control over wind had become astonishingly precise.
Every strand of wind moved exactly according to his intentions.
As a result, the flames swept wildly through the hallway without actually igniting the walls.
Well—
Aside from zombie birds crashing into walls while burning.
And aside from the black scorch marks left by smoke.
As for Yan Fei—
As long as he possessed metal and his opponent wasn’t another metal user at equal or higher level, most enemies simply died under his terrifying metal manipulation.
Like now.
He directly split the metal before him into countless small fragments and plastered them across the zombie birds’ heads.
Then—
CRACK.
The thin sheets of metal the birds initially mistook for harmless scraps suddenly became deadly executioners, instantly crushing their skulls.
Back before the apocalypse, zombie games displayed “The zombies ate your brains” when players died.
But if these zombie birds could see death messages, they’d absolutely read:
“Humans crushed your skull.”
The three newly advanced level-four ability users cleaned out the hallway zombies at terrifying speed.
Before long, every visible zombie bird on the fourteenth floor had disappeared.
Of course, plenty still remained in the stairwell blocked by Luo Xun and Song Lingling’s shields—and even more continued squeezing upward from below.
At that moment, while enduring relentless impacts against their shields, both silently thanked fate for one thing:
Thank goodness this was an elevator building.
The narrow stairwell limited how many birds could attack at once.
Otherwise, they’d already be overwhelmed.
By the time the shields in their hands had become badly deformed and the pair had begun periodically spraying mushroom extract around the shield edges, the battle on the fourteenth floor finally ended.
Zhang Su and Xu Mei freed up their hands to help deal with the stairwell birds.
Yan Fei immediately manipulated the metal from the doors of the two open apartments, sealing them shut and securing their rear position before joining the stairwell cleanup.
It took nearly an entire hour before they finally eliminated every zombie bird inside the stairwell.
Afterward, they reopened the two apartments with open doors, confirmed the interior situations, and then Yan Fei manipulated all available metal inside to temporarily seal the shattered windows.
None of them wanted to clear a floor only to later discover new zombie birds entering through broken windows and attacking from behind.
Meanwhile, throughout the base, the large-scale cleanup of zombie birds had begun.
While airborne, the birds were horrifying threats.
But once grounded, their combat effectiveness dropped by at least half.
At that point, they resembled ordinary zombies wandering outside the base.
The only difference was that evolved zombies outside walked steadily—
Birds, however, were still birds.
Their talons were never designed for walking.
Gunfire and battle sounds constantly attracted additional zombie birds, unintentionally helping desperate survivors trapped elsewhere.
Within only a single day and night, most zombie birds throughout the base had already been eliminated.
At the same time, however, the base’s population dropped drastically yet again.
Dragging their exhausted bodies, Luo Xun’s group finally returned home to the sixteenth floor.
After clearing all zombies from their building and retrieving crystal cores from the dead zombie birds below, they encountered other survivor squads from nearby residential complexes—groups unable to move into New City.
Unlike Luo Xun’s group, however, these people’s primary goal wasn’t hunting crystal cores.
Their true target was the “inheritance” left behind in homes completely overrun by zombie birds where every resident had died.
Many of them, after witnessing Luo Xun’s group’s terrifying combat ability, eagerly tried recruiting them as allies.
And after hearing their motives, Luo Xun’s group silently began wondering whether they themselves were simply too kindhearted.
When clearing their own building, they only sealed broken windows in apartments where everyone had already died and the doors stood open.
Then they simply left.
As for apartments where survivors clearly remained alive, they never knocked on doors or tried recruiting those people into cleanup teams.
But these other groups operated differently.
Not only did they loot the “inheritances” of dead households—
If someone requested help clearing zombie birds from their apartment, these people charged “life-saving fees.”
They took crystal cores.
And then picked through survivors’ remaining supplies for anything useful.
In the dead of winter, everyone lacked food.
Although the zombie bird invasion had caused losses for these scavenger groups too, the supplies gained from looting others more than compensated.
“Back already? How’d things go?”
When Luo Xun’s group finally returned, Li Tie and the others hurried out to help remove their weapons and equipment while anxiously asking about the situation.
“Our residential complex and the nearby seven-story buildings are mostly cleared. Not sure about the other neighborhoods, but there should be squads working there too. The nearby streets are mostly free of zombie birds now, though people still need to be careful outside.”
As Luo Xun spoke, he bent down and rubbed the little dog’s head while it wagged its tail frantically.
Everyone finally relaxed slightly before discussing other matters.
Wang Duo reported, “Around noon, someone came up to our floor and seemed like they wanted to pry open the door. The moment they heard us moving inside, they ran downstairs. We watched from the balcony for a long time and never saw anyone leave the building. Probably someone from our own apartment complex.”
Wu Xin cursed angrily.
“What kind of people are these? Brother Luo and the others cleared all the zombies from the building before they even dared come out. Instead of helping kill zombies, they came here trying to break into our place!”
Luo Xun, Xu Mei, and Yan Fei exchanged helpless smiles.
Zhang Su merely sneered indifferently.
“That’s nothing. You didn’t see how those people ‘helped’ others deal with zombie birds. They looked no different from bandits.”
Everyone sighed bitterly.
And just then—
The air-raid sirens, silent for two full days, suddenly echoed throughout the entire base once more.
Only then did everyone abruptly remember:
This siege hadn’t involved only those terrifying zombie birds capable of reaching directly above the base.
Outside the walls still surrounded countless zombies.
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