If that were really the case, it would be disastrous.
Everyone who had lived through the zombie crisis understood the gravity of the situation.
But they couldn’t draw any firm conclusions yet. Jiang Cheng could only say: “Come on, let’s check if there’s anyone else in the courtyard.”
The timing of this outbreak was actually much more favorable for those in the neighborhood than last time.
Because at this hour, there weren’t many people around.
Even with all those who had heeded Jiang Cheng’s warning and rushed back, almost all of them had made it into their homes in time—except for the last few.
The courtyard was mostly empty. Far better than last time.
Even if it weren’t Youth Apartments, but another neighborhood, this would still be a low-population hour.
Those who stayed home—whether elderly or homemakers—many had already started preparing dinner in the kitchen.
Office workers and students weren’t home at this time.
People from various buildings began coming down one after another.
And almost everyone who came down was wearing armor. In other words, only those with armor dared to come out.
Of course, there were also some bold ones without armor who made their own protective gear and came down anyway.
In their own neighborhood, especially seeing Jiang Cheng and Li Jiangbing downstairs, they naturally felt emboldened.
Some charismatic figures, just by standing there, acted as an anchoring presence.
Song Jingshuo called Jiang Cheng, learned they were downstairs, and came down as well.
His luck was bad, though—he took the elevator to the first floor, but it stopped midway.
When the doors opened, a zombie outside was gnawing on someone. Hearing the noise, it turned and locked eyes with him.
Song Jingshuo: “…”
Song Jingshuo felt today was really not his day.
The fortunate part of the misfortune was that it was a second-generation zombie.
Second-gen zombie movement patterns were easy to predict—straight line.
Sure enough, the zombie dropped its half-devoured victim and lunged straight into the elevator.
Ever since the first zombie crisis ended, Song Jingshuo had been worried about the imbalance between his arms.
He’d swung his right arm too many times killing zombies—he could feel the muscle shape was different from his left arm now.
On the plus side, it had trained his reaction speed and explosive power.
The zombie charged into the elevator. He sidestepped in a flash and brought his blade down.
One head fell to the floor.
Song Jingshuo had bought this knife during a trip deep into an ethnic minority region. It wasn’t one of those shoddy souvenir knives from tourist traps—he’d talked his way into buying it from a local’s home, paying a hefty sum.
And after the zombie crisis ended, he’d sharpened it again before putting it away.
It was exceptionally sharp.
He kicked the zombie’s body out.
He walked over to the person being gnawed on. The man was barely alive, not yet dead, eyes open, unable to speak.
Song Jingshuo gripped his knife.
He gripped it again.
In the end, he let go.
He bent down, grabbed the man’s wrist, and dragged him into the elevator.
Ultimately, he still couldn’t bring himself to cut off the head of someone who was still “human.”
He dragged the man out of the building.
By then, there were already dozens of people in the courtyard. Someone spotted him: “Song Jingshuo!”
Everyone ran over. Those who recognized the man he was dragging sighed.
Jiang Cheng asked: “Ran into a zombie upstairs?”
Song Jingshuo said: “Already dealt with.”
Jiang Cheng asked: “What kind of zombie?”
Song Jingshuo felt a flicker of surprise, then answered: “Should be second-gen.”
As soon as he said it, he realized: “How could it be second-gen.”
Everyone had just woken up—some might still be unconscious. How could a second-gen already appear?
Li Jiangbing told him: “It’s bad now. They can turn directly into second-gen. The one we just ran into was even an evolved one—turned straight into an evolved one. Ugh, that’s such a mouthful. Can we just call them third-gen?”
Many agreed: “Let’s call them third-gen.”
“I was just thinking, does this count as the third generation?”
“Third-gen is easier to say.”
And so, without any official designation, Youth Apartments took it upon themselves to name this new type of zombie “third-generation zombies.”
Song Jingshuo dragged the man to an open area and let go, telling the people around him: “Keep an eye on him.”
After finding no more zombies in the courtyard, everyone gathered around the man, in case he turned.
The man was drenched in blood, his eyes still open, refusing to close.
Su Yu couldn’t bear to watch. She knelt beside his head and asked him: “Do you have any last words? Someone to contact?”
Li Jiangbing said: “It’s no use. He can’t speak anymore.”
He comforted Su Yu: “Let it go.”
Su Yu sighed and gave up.
She felt her heart was hardening too. Probably because she’d seen too many deaths.
Someone shouted: “Zombie!”
Everyone turned—a zombie had emerged from one of the buildings. They all rushed over at once.
Li Jiangbing grabbed Su Yu: “Don’t all go. We two will watch this one.”
The noise from the courtyard was probably especially conspicuous in the current environment.
Because the residential area of the Tech New District was separated from the tech park by a river, it was particularly quiet at this hour.
There were none of the piercing car alarms from downtown traffic pileups—just utter stillness.
So the shouts and calls from the crowd sounded especially loud.
It seemed to have attracted zombies from inside the buildings.
Song Jingshuo and Jiang Cheng didn’t move either. There were already enough people charging in.
Song Jingshuo asked Jiang Cheng: “How many zombies do you think there are?”
“Not many,” Jiang Cheng said. “Not that many people came back overall.”
Song Jingshuo regretted: “It would be nice to have official data.”
He really wanted to know the mutation rate from last time.
But the government had never released any data—not even the death toll, let alone hard-to-verify statistics like mutation rates.
The noise from the courtyard attracted zombies from the buildings.
Though second-generation zombies were more agile than original ones, they still lacked intelligence. When drawn by sound, they didn’t open doors and take the stairs—they simply crashed through windows and jumped down from above.
One second-gen zombie leaped from the tenth floor.
Even with their powerful jumping ability, they couldn’t survive that height. It slapped flat onto the ground, bones likely shattered, unable to get up, just writhing on the ground.
They went over and cut off its head.
Someone even ran back to tell Jiang Cheng: “It’s second-gen, not third-gen.”
Jiang Cheng nodded.
Jiang Cheng asked Song Jingshuo: “Do you think third-gen will keep evolving?”
Song Jingshuo felt a chill just imagining it: “Don’t jinx it.”
Jiang Cheng watched everyone rush toward another newly emerged zombie in the distance: “I was just thinking—how is this not a form of species evolution?”
Faster. Stronger.
The previous shortcoming was a lack of intelligence. The emergence of third-gen clearly addressed that flaw.
As for craving flesh and blood? Humans themselves had evolved from the stage of eating raw meat and drinking blood.
That’s just how nature worked.
Even in civilized society, though not directly eating meat and drinking blood, they’d simply found other ways to consume.
That was the law of the world.
Song Jingshuo’s face was taut: “I don’t accept that as ‘evolution.’ Nor do I consider it evolution. It took humans tens of thousands of years to build the civilization we have now. If ‘evolution’ meant ending up like this, why bother walking upright in the first place? Why learn to make fire and eat cooked food?”
He said: “This is at most devolution—never evolution.”
Jiang Cheng glanced at him.
Song Jingshuo: “…Just say it.”
They were life-and-death comrades—there was nothing they couldn’t say directly.
Jiang Cheng remarked: “I didn’t expect your worldview to be so solid.”
Song Jingshuo: “…”
So in Jiang Cheng’s mind, he’d always been someone with a skewed worldview?
As dusk fell, more and more people gathered in the courtyard. They made noise to lure out zombies, and quite a few emerged—all of them dealt with.
All were original or second-generation zombies.
The man Li Jiangbing and Su Yu had been watching finally died and turned. Li Jiangbing took care of him.
Song Jingshuo sighed in relief: “Looks like there aren’t that many third-gens.”
If anyone was a true jinx, it was Song Jingshuo.
No sooner had he spoken than a window on Building 3 shattered, and two zombies tangled together fell, hitting the ground with a loud crash.
Because one of them was particularly massive.
Everyone was stunned.
He Tian licked the blood from between her fingers, licking it all clean.
It still wasn’t enough—she wanted more. She knew she had to get out, so she opened her door and came out.
The hallway was long. She walked all the way to the elevator lobby, knowing she had to go down from here.
She pried open the elevator doors with her hands. Inside was the dark elevator shaft, a foul breeze rising from below.
Just as she was about to jump down, she heard sounds from elsewhere.
She followed the noise into the stairwell.
She lived high up; the sound was coming from below.
She bounded down several flights in a few leaps and soon saw the source of the noise.
A bloated, massive, repulsive body.
It was someone she deeply despised—Nie Kuizhang.
He Tian had thought many times: “I really want to kill that disgusting Nie Kuizhang.”
But back then, it was just venting—actually killing someone was impossible.
But now, when Nie Kuizhang looked up with blood all over his mouth, and their eyes met, He Tian thought: Yes, I can.
I can kill him.
Kill him.
He Tian leaped and pounced at Nie Kuizhang.
The two of them tumbled down several flights, crashing into the hallway, then smashed through the glass at the end of the corridor and fell together.
Below was the canopy over the building’s entrance.
With a loud crash, the canopy collapsed under Nie Kuizhang’s massive weight and the force of the fall, shocking everyone.
A male and a female zombie sprang up from the rubble and tore into each other again.
Primal attacks—with claw-like hands, with teeth, with skull-smashing headbutts.
They were trying to bite through each other’s throats, snap each other’s arms, shatter each other’s skulls.
No one had ever seen two zombies attack each other. Everyone was stunned.
Someone shouted: “Nie Kuizhang! That’s Nie Kuizhang!”
Nie Kuizhang’s build was distinctive and easy to recognize.
But few could identify the female zombie. Her hair was disheveled, always covering her face, and she moved fast. Plus it was getting dark and the streetlights hadn’t come on yet—no one could see clearly.
Only Su Yu’s face went pale!
She rushed forward, but Jiang Cheng was quick and grabbed her.
Because Jiang Cheng recognized who the girl was.
Su Yu turned her head, her voice hoarse and trembling: “He Tian… it’s, it’s He Tian!”
Gao Yuxuan quietly told Zhao Yi: “It’s that girl who walks the little dog.”
Zhao Yi stared for a moment and said with certainty: “They’re both third-gen!”
He Tian let out an inhuman shriek!
Nie Kuizhang tried to flee!
When they were both human, He Tian and Nie Kuizhang were in completely different leagues.
Nie Kuizhang could shove He Tian to the ground with one push, and she couldn’t get back up.
But Nie Kuizhang wasn’t a muscular man like Li Jiangbing, who’d built his body through hard work and sweat.
Nie Kuizhang was just naturally tall and big—his sheer tonnage gave him strength.
He wasn’t a soldier with the battle-hardened physique from intense training. After mutating, he wasn’t in the same class as ordinary zombies.
At bottom, he was still an ordinary person.
After turning into a zombie, cells underwent a total transformation at the genetic level.
Speed and strength were dramatically enhanced.
The gap between ordinary people was flattened under this enhancement.
He Tian was at no disadvantage.
In fact, with the same leaping ability, He Tian’s lighter, more agile frame gave her the upper hand. Many of Nie Kuizhang’s attacks missed. His massive weight, which had been an advantage before, now brought him nothing but hindrance.
He couldn’t dodge He Tian’s attacks many times, and he grew visibly more agitated, letting out roars of frustration.
Nie Kuizhang’s ear was torn off by He Tian’s bite. He swung a punch at her shoulder, sending her flying, and turned to run.
But He Tian’s desire to kill him was also amplified by her genes. She roared, leaped, and tackled him from behind, both of them rolling into the bushes.
The beast-like roaring suddenly stopped.
Everyone froze.
The next moment, the automatic timer streetlights flicked on.
In the night-lit bushes, a figure sprang up—slim, long-haired, with a face that still showed signs of delicate beauty.
But her skin and eyes had completely mutated.
In her hand, she held a severed head.
A massive head, wrenched from its body.
He Tian had delivered the finishing blow to Nie Kuizhang.
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