Chapter 90 — A Hard-Fought Battle
Yan Fei was the first to recover. With a wave of his hand, a row of metal railings sealed off the large pit that little Xinran had turned into sand. He then summoned the metal piled nearby and laid it directly across the bottom of the pit.
The entire pit was covered with a thick layer of metal—its bottom and even its surrounding “walls” were all lined, as if a metal-forged “trough” had been constructed. With this, the whole pit fell completely under Yan Fei’s control.
Next, another batch of metal flew in, erecting a layer of steel spikes at the bottom of the pit.
At the same time, everyone continued picking off the higher-level zombies among those gathering around, to prevent any unexpected situations once the zombies started falling into the trap.
When the final layer of spike traps was finished, Yan Fei took a metal-sealed box from his pack and glanced at Zhang Su beside him. Zhang Su raised an eyebrow, signaling that he was ready at any time. Only then did Yan Fei “float” the box above the pit and open it.
Bright red liquid poured out, and with the help of Zhang Su’s wind ability, it spread to almost every corner of the very bottom of the pit.
“Get ready to start,” Luo Xun said. With all preparations complete and night having fully fallen, the smile on his face grew deeper.
“Alright,” Yan Fei replied, a hint of excitement in his voice. This was their first time using this method to trap and kill zombies—tonight they would see just how effective it was.
The railings around the pit instantly toppled inward, transforming into a thin metal sheet that covered the entire pit from above.
Everyone stood up and retreated, watching as the excited zombies surged toward the gap where the group had been moments earlier—packed so tightly together there wasn’t the slightest gap between them. Just as they reached the opening—
Suddenly!
The steel plate covering the pit “vanished” in an instant!!
All the zombies above the pit dropped straight down. Even worse, the zombies rushing in behind them followed headlong, one after another, plunging into the pit as well!
The zombies at the very bottom were immediately impaled by the steel spikes, their limbs pierced through. When they touched the mushroom extract at the lowest layer, hiss—thin wisps of white smoke rose as their lower bodies began to corrode!
Everyone sucked in a sharp breath, staring in shock at the zombies that had just fallen into the pit—and at those continuing to throw themselves in after them—speechless for a long moment.
“Yan Fei, cover it,” Luo Xun’s voice suddenly cut through their stunned silence, snapping everyone back to their senses and prompting them to prepare for the next step.
Yan Fei laid the steel pipes he had previously withdrawn back over the pit. This time, however, it wasn’t a solid plate but a crisscrossing lattice—a metal mesh.
“Pour the gasoline.”
At the new command, everyone excitedly grabbed the gasoline cans that had been prepared earlier. With Zhang Su’s wind ability assisting, they poured the fuel as evenly as possible into the pit. Then Xu Mei tossed in a small fireball—
Boom!
A violent explosion erupted. Huge flames burst outward, like a fiery red flower blooming in the depths of the night—so dazzling it made one dizzy.
“That’s enough. Let’s head back. Today’s work is basically done,” Luo Xun said, letting out a long sigh of relief. After such a burn tonight, even if more zombies wandered over later, they would mostly be roasted alive on the mesh. Only a very few might break through. Moreover, before lighting the fire, Yan Fei had already sealed off the small doorway completely with leftover metal to prevent the flames from reaching the people hiding inside the bank.
The raging fire burned for a full three hours before finally dying down.
Early the next morning, when everyone woke up and opened the door, what they saw was a pitch-black pit. No trace of the zombies’ original forms could be discerned anymore.
Thin strands of black smoke still drifted up occasionally. Luo Xun and the others pinched their noses and stared for quite a while, unable to make out any intact limbs at all. By comparison, the zombies they had killed outside the pit the day before looked relatively “complete.”
“Let’s collect the crystal cores and see how efficient yesterday was,” Luo Xun said with a smile, turning to Yan Fei. “This one’s on you.” He pointed at the pit.
Everyone looked at the blackened pit with amused expressions. They understood what Luo Xun meant, but imagining Yan Fei dealing with something so disgusting felt inexplicably surreal.
Picking up crystal cores wasn’t as tiring as fighting zombies, but it was still a tedious, repetitive task. It took the entire morning for everyone to finish processing the zombie corpses. The zombies killed outside were piled off to the side, ready to be burned later.
Yan Fei’s pit, however, was much easier to handle. He first manipulated the huge metal frame to “fly” out of the pit. In an open area nearby, he transformed the bottom layer of metal into a “sieve,” with each mesh opening smaller than an ordinary crystal core. By simply shaking the metal container back and forth, the zombie ash fell away, leaving behind relatively intact chunks of remains and the crystal cores.
Because they had used a lot of gasoline the night before, the zombies in the pit had been burned extremely thoroughly. After this process, Yan Fei ended up finishing first—without even getting his hands dirty.
A small mountain of crystal cores piled up before everyone. After subtracting what they had already used during the battle, just from that half-day alone they had harvested a full four thousand crystal cores.
Four thousand!!
Everyone sucked in a sharp breath. Every pair of eyes shone as they stared at the pile of crystal cores—four thousand! Three times more than last time!
Yan Fei thought for a moment and suggested, “There are a little over four thousand cores in total. Everyone contributed quite a bit this time, so how about each group taking a thousand—me with Luo Xun; Zhang Su with Wang Duo; Li Tie’s group of four; and Xu Mei’s group of three. Xiao Ranran contributed a lot too, so let the remaining odds and ends go to the three ladies. Any objections?”
Li Tie and the others exchanged glances, then spoke up a bit embarrassedly. “We didn’t really do much. All our weapons were made by Brother Yan, and Brother Luo trained us—without him we wouldn’t have been able to hit zombies at all. Taking a thousand cores feels like too much…”
“Yeah, yeah,” Han Li and the others nodded quickly. They wanted a big haul too, but they knew their own capabilities.
Luo Xun smiled and persuaded them. “I’m just an ordinary person too. And don’t forget—you’re four people. It’s not easy to come out and fight zombies; everyone’s risking their lives. Besides, if you don’t need them after you get back, you can trade them to us. Yan Fei, Zhang Su, and Xu Mei can exchange other things—much better than us going outside to buy cores from strangers.”
Xu Mei and the others nodded as well. After all, without making up a team of ten, they wouldn’t even be able to leave the base no matter how capable they were. Li Tie’s group might not excel at large-scale killing, but in clearing scattered zombies and taking over defense while the ability users rested, their role was far from negligible. Without them, the ability users wouldn’t even have time to rest and replenish their crystal cores.
The level-two cores were distributed according to everyone’s different abilities. What delighted Luo Xun and Yan Fei was that—somehow—they had even gotten a few level-two metal-type cores! Was it because those zombies usually had no metal to use and therefore had no idea how to manipulate their abilities? Otherwise, with so much metal nearby, how had they never attacked with it?
Of course, another possibility was that they had died under the combined abilities of Zhang Su, Xu Mei, and Yu Xinran before anyone noticed.
By the time the zombies outside were cleared, it was already close to noon. They planned to eat lunch and then head back—the nearby zombies had basically all been dealt with, leaving only a few scattered wanderers that weren’t worth their attention.
Yan Fei stood up, preparing to go outside and flip the trap over—turning it upside down so it wouldn’t accidentally trap passing vehicles or people. Before he could even step out the door, everyone heard the faint sound of engines from the street.
“Passing through again? I’ll take a look!” Wang Duo grabbed his binoculars and ran up to the second floor. He was back in no time.
“A convoy—quite a few vehicles following behind. Brother Luo, should we do another round?”
Seeing the excitement in Wang Duo’s eyes—and the eager looks on everyone else’s faces—Luo Xun thought it over. After confirming that there were at most two or three hundred zombies trailing the convoy, he nodded.
They threw out the last blood pack and set up the trap. As they listened to the roars of zombies gathering from the neighboring street, calculating how many might come and which killing method would be best, they suddenly heard the sound of engines coming from another direction as well…
“Holy crap! What’s going on?!” Wang Duo and Han Li, who had gone upstairs to check, ran back down pointing in the other direction. “There’s a huge convoy over there—several buses too—coming from the city! There’s a massive horde of zombies following them; you can’t even see the end of it!”
Intercepting passing zombies on the way back to harvest crystal cores was a win–win situation—but the infuriating part was that just as they were about to finish off the last few zombies and leave, another massive wave suddenly showed up!
While they were debating whether to retreat, the zombies from earlier had already gathered. Luo Xun made a snap decision—clear them all first!
One wave of zombies had already blocked the main entrance, with another large group about to arrive. If they wanted to leave safely, they had to wipe them out first; everything else could wait. Even if they returned late, it was better than risking a breakout now. They had vehicles, yes, and Yan Fei had reinforced them—but they were still ordinary vehicles, without the power of off-roaders or the durability to ram through hordes. There was no way they could force their way out.
Even the small container truck they’d acquired couldn’t be used to ram zombies—run into just a couple with mutated limbs, and they’d be dragged straight out of the vehicle.
Yan Fei quickly modified the trap again. The first wave of zombies thundered into the pit one after another, but those that came later kept rushing in relentlessly—all because of that last blood pack they’d thrown.
Luo Xun silently took the lesson to heart while leading everyone to mow down the zombies in the pit. It wasn’t convenient to set the pit on fire yet—the zombies drawn by the vehicles were even more numerous, so they needed more of them to fall in first.
The convoy with the buses seemed to be survivors who had originally lived in the city, now fleeing toward the base. After the apocalypse, many people had rushed into the base immediately and avoided outside dangers, but plenty were still stuck in the city trying to survive. Some relied on living in high-rises that ordinary zombies couldn’t climb; once they cleared their own buildings, they used them as bases.
If someone organized the community, they would even build defenses and regularly send ability users and strong ordinary people out to gather food and supplies.
Zhang Su had lived like this outside the base before. He just didn’t know why his former companions had later gone to the base as well—only to be encountered and killed by him.
These buses were likely leaving for the same reasons. When they noticed many zombies suddenly peeling off and running in another direction, they guessed someone nearby was injured and the smell of blood had lured the zombies away. But no one in a convoy that had finally reached the edge of the city would go check. They had just escaped—why invite trouble? As for whoever had been injured and drawn the zombies… they could only wish them luck.
Most of the zombies rushing toward the main gate fell tightly packed into the pit, but what gave Luo Xun a headache was that the number coming afterward was even larger! The more zombies piled into the pit, the easier it became for those that fell later to climb up over the earlier ones!
“The pit can only trap and kill close to a thousand zombies. Any more than that, and they’ll climb out,” Luo Xun said calmly despite the crisis. He immediately turned to He Qiankun. “You and Li Tie go check how much gasoline we have left.”
Of the four thousand-plus zombies from last night, only the final portion had died in the pit by burning; the rest had been blasted apart directly by abilities. The pit couldn’t possibly hold this many!
The two ran off at once. Zhang Su and the others were working together to kill the zombies already struggling in the pit, as well as level-two zombies farther away that were charging in and posed a real threat.
Li Tie and He Qiankun returned quickly. “Luo Xun! We used about a third earlier—two-thirds left!”
Luo Xun nodded. “Leave two barrels untouched. Bring the rest over.” Then he looked at Zhang Su. “In a bit, help them pour the gasoline into the pit—same as before…”
Before he could finish, Xu Mei suddenly cried out. Luo Xun turned to see the red glow that had enveloped her just fade away.
“Level two?!” Having seen metal-type ability users level up before, Luo Xun and Yan Fei immediately understood.
“Level two?! Sister Xu, you really advanced to level two?!” Song Lingling, who was harassing zombies outside with water arrows, looked at her in delight.
Xu Mei nodded blankly, taking a long moment before she could speak. “Yes, level two. My mental energy feels completely replenished all at once!” She looked down at her hand, still clutching several crystal cores—mostly level one—and explained apologetically, “I was in a hurry to absorb cores to recover my energy and accidentally grabbed a level-two one as well…”
After her last mission, she had tried absorbing level-two cores but couldn’t. So she had kept them carefully separated. This batch had just been divided, with level one and two mixed together—and she’d absorbed one without noticing.
“How many level-one cores did it take you to reach level two?” Yan Fei suddenly asked.
Xu Mei thought for a moment. “Maybe… four or five hundred?”
Yan Fei nodded. “Looks like that’s about what it takes to go from level one to level two.” Then he looked at Song Lingling. “You should level up your ability as soon as possible too. I think once you reach level two, even if your ability doesn’t change form, it might develop more effective ways to assist in attacks.”
Song Lingling had just nodded when, before she could speak, Zhang Su frowned and asked, “Why is it that even if I absorb level-two crystal cores, they’re useless to me?”
Yan Fei glanced at him, a hint of a smile in his eyes. “Your situation is probably the same as mine—a mutated ability derived from a normal one. That means you need more crystal cores than ordinary level-one ability users. I never counted precisely, but when I advanced to level two, it seemed to take about twice as many cores as Xu Mei and the others needed.”
“…A thousand.” Zhang Su turned away silently. Raising his hand, he whipped up a fierce gust, sweeping up the sand the little girl had been playing with earlier and sending it scouring toward the oncoming zombies. He hadn’t had enough cores before, so there was no way for his ability to level up. Now he finally had enough—but a thousand cores… There was no way he could absorb that many today!
Li Tie and the others carried over the gasoline and opened the caps. With a push of his wind, Zhang Su “sent” the gasoline splashing into the pit. Xu Mei—whose fire ability had grown tremendously stronger after leveling up, allowing her to create more fireballs as well as fire nets and even fire dragons—was brimming with excitement. When Luo Xun nodded for her to ignite it, she immediately flicked her hand, sending a small fireball into the pit and lighting a magnificent bonfire!
The flames roared up violently. But with an endless stream of zombies still charging in from behind, there was no chance for everyone to turn back and rest like the night before.
Luo Xun and the others switched to ordinary bolts, shooting down the zombies stalled outside the pit. Using the fire in the pit as a source, Xu Mei manipulated wave after wave of blazing flames, burning the zombies around the pit!
“This uses way less mental energy than firing flames myself!” Xu Mei cried out in surprise. From across the pit, she controlled the flames along the edge of the fire wall. A massive blaze split off from the inferno, forming a fire dragon that shot straight into a cluster of zombies! It was even larger than the fire dragon she’d been able to create back when she was only level two!
Luo Xun scanned the surroundings and said to Song Lingling, “Carry Xinran over there. Use water to cool the area, and let her turn that ground into sand. Zhang Su, Xu Mei—once Ranran produces sand, coordinate with her to attack!”
“Got it!” the two replied, moving closer to Yu Xinran’s position.
Zhang Su also took advantage of the wind to make the flames in the pit burn even more fiercely, occasionally blasting jets of fire toward the zombies opposite them.
Everyone’s faces were flushed red from the heat of the nearby blaze. Fortunately, with Zhang Su around, they didn’t have to worry about the fire consuming all the oxygen—otherwise, who would dare light such a massive fire at such close range?
Sand and metal spikes were heated until they glowed red in the flames. Driven by fierce winds, they plunged viciously into the bodies of nearby zombies, killing them one by one…
The battle continued until evening, when the fire finally began to die down. The streets outside were packed with zombie corpses.
Though utterly exhausted, everyone—who still had to return to the base and work the next day—forced themselves to stay alert, opening the doors and beginning to clean up the bodies.
It wasn’t until ten at night that all the zombies were finally dealt with. This grueling round of labor netted them over 2,600 crystal cores.
They roughly divided them into four portions again, one for each team. After taking their shares, they cleared out the remaining zombies around the bank, covered the ground with metal panels, and had Zhang Su blow Yu Xinran’s sand flat over the metal. Song Lingling sprinkled a fine “rain,” and Li Tie’s group stomped around to compact the damp sand. Finally, Zhang Su manipulated the wind to blow another layer of loose sand over it, making the ground color blend in with the surroundings. Only then did everyone climb back into their vehicles, ready to return to the base.
“Next time we absolutely can’t wait until the last two days to come out,” Luo Xun yawned. “Let Li Tie and the others take a day off in advance—so we don’t run into something like this again.”
Yan Fei drove, smiling. “Got it. They’re planning to go back and haggle with their boss anyway, see if they can swindle another day of rest.”
Among the group, only Zhang Su—who had taken these two days off plus tomorrow—would be able to properly rest for a full day after the fighting. Everyone else basically had to go to work early the next morning… ah, except for the three ladies, Xu Mei and the others. Their schedules were flexible, so they could rest at home all day tomorrow.
Not long after setting off, the convoy turned toward a nearby commercial street. Coming back to his senses, Luo Xun suddenly remembered—they still hadn’t picked up the refrigerators and freezers!
There were poisonous mushrooms at home waiting to be harvested with nowhere to store them. Not bringing back the fridges and freezers would be an absolute waste! While unloading the appliances, Luo Xun took little Xinran to a large tree by the roadside and had her turn all the surrounding soil into sand. Beside them, Yan Fei used a makeshift metal saw to cut the tree into several large sections, securing them directly onto the roof of the vehicle—this tree would be their future mushroom log supply.
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
