The vehicles drove all the way into the city. Outside the Fifth Ring Road, there were very few zombies.
Once they entered within the Fifth Ring, zombies gradually increased in number.
The 535 model bus had far better performance than an ordinary bus—stepping on the gas made it race along like the wind.
The convoy didn’t stop to deal with the zombies on the road. Today’s main purpose of entering the city was simply to “take a look” at the municipal government.
The municipal government was located in the old city district within the Second Ring Road.
The convoy planned to cut straight through to the city center via Fushe Road.
After entering the Fourth Ring, traffic on the roads increased noticeably.
The vehicles from the Tech New District had been modified by metal-type superhumans, with especially reinforced front ends. As long as there wasn’t a big truck ahead, they’d just push straight through, shoving smaller cars aside.
But their speed dropped significantly.
Zombies on the road caught wind of the movement and stirred.
The people in the vehicles felt a bit unnerved. Several middle school students turned pale.
Because there were so many of them.
Even at the schools and district government in the Tech New District, there hadn’t been such dense concentrations of zombies.
S City was, after all, a metropolis with a population of twenty million.
The blades on the blade vehicles shot out and retracted rapidly at high frequency, but even so, some zombies still slipped through.
Su Yu stood up: “How about I step in? But the four vehicles would need to get closer together.”
The vehicles were too big and spaced too far apart—they had to be closer for her to cover them all.
Jiang Cheng said: “Hold on for now.”
She pressed herself against the window, observed for a moment, then picked up the radio: “Attention all vehicles—try fixing the blades in place, extending them like wings on both sides of the vehicles. Oh, and the front too. Adjust the height to suit your needs.”
Cui Haiyang said: “Great minds think alike!”
He’d just had the same idea when Jiang Cheng voiced it.
The blade vehicles stopped their constant extending and retracting, and instead grew a ring of “little skirts,” as if the vehicles had been trimmed with a border.
These “little skirts” were half a meter wide, with outer edges as thin as cicada wings and razor-sharp.
Credit for this went to Xiao Wang, the security guard.
Before he’d gone astray with the Cao family, Xiao Wang had actually worked quite well with the other metal-type superhumans.
He came from a rural artisan background—a real blacksmith. His affinity with iron was even stronger than Cui Haiyang’s. Metal in his hands really did behave like modeling clay.
He might not have been able to make moving joint connections like Cui Haiyang, but when both of them sharpened blades, his edges came out far sharper.
Cui Haiyang had humbly sought his advice.
Xiao Wang, a rural youth working in the city, felt both flattered and a little proud to be treated like a teacher by urban college students. He held nothing back, sharing all his feelings and insights about using his superpower.
Cui Haiyang and the other metal-types, who were used to kneading iron like clay every day, had an instant breakthrough with just a little pointer from him.
Everyone’s micro-control improved by leaps and bounds.
Now, the four 535 buses had grown rings of blades, and they were incredibly sharp.
The ones chasing the vehicles were all fast-moving second-generation zombies. They sprinted at full speed, lunged forward—and lost their heads.
The superhumans inside didn’t even have to exert themselves. The zombies lost their heads simply because of the sheer speed and force of their own pounces.
Shorter zombies had only half their heads sliced off; taller ones had their necks and shoulders cleaved clean through together.
The road behind the buses was drenched and dripping with dark brown fluid.
This wasn’t quite the heroic image of beheading zombies or burning them to death that the middle schoolers had imagined.
A few of them were starting to feel queasy—some stared at the ceiling, some at the floor, some closed their eyes and muttered to themselves.
Only Little Huang remained calm, sitting by the window, watching the zombies throw themselves to their deaths like moths to a flame, as if admiring a view.
But suddenly Little Huang turned his head: “Watch out.”
Two seconds after he spoke, a zombie slapped right against the window.
It was the window right next to Xu En, who yelped in fright.
It was clearly a third-generation zombie. It had observed how the blades on the vehicle worked, and instead of running into them, it jumped straight onto the blades, using them as stepping stones.
Its hands gripped the iron bars outside the glass, its pitch-black eyes staring at the fresh flesh and blood inside.
A flash of white light came from Su Yu—the protective dome sprang out and retracted in an instant.
That third-generation zombie was flung away.
The middle schoolers had seen this protective dome before, but watching it again still felt awesome.
Jiang Cheng picked up the radio: “Add another ring on top.”
One after another, the four vehicles “grew” another ring of blades at a slightly higher position. Now even the third-generation zombies couldn’t jump up anymore.
Xu En let out a long breath and sighed: “Humans really do need to use tools.”
Having a bit of superpower made you feel pretty impressive. Dealing with one or two stray zombies was indeed no problem.
But if you were caught in the middle of that many zombies, your superpowers suddenly didn’t seem like enough.
You’d probably get taken out long before you ran out of steam.
When a kid spoke, the adults laughed.
But after laughing, they realized things were different after all. The adults had been through countless battles by now.
This wasn’t everyone’s first time facing zombies. During the last outbreak, these kids had probably been kept indoors by their parents and sheltered.
They clearly had far less experience than the adults.
The vehicles, now with two rings of blades, drove all the way into the Second Ring.
Once inside the Second Ring, they passed several square, symmetrical buildings—some bureau, some ministry—all government offices.
Finally, they arrived at the municipal government entrance.
Everyone looked through the glass: “Huh? Why is there a big steel gate like that? I’ve passed by here before—I remember it being the kind of telescopic sliding gate.”
“There is one, I think.”
“Yeah, there is. I came here with my boss once. The gate slides open to both sides during the day and closes at night. I was bored while registering and happened to notice.”
“So why is it closed during the day?”
That hit the nail on the head.
Jiang Cheng: “There might be people inside.”
Suddenly, there was light in everyone’s eyes.
Or maybe, it had been closed right before the end.
Jiang Cheng kept that thought to herself, not wanting to dampen their spirits.
There were also a lot of zombies on the road. With the vehicle stopped, even the basic zombies could lunge at it. Each one that came lost its head, one after another.
The middle schoolers were getting numb to it: “Can’t these zombies be a little smarter?”
Li Jiangbing scolded: “Don’t jinx it.”
Why would you wish for zombies to be smarter?
Mo Li had been sleeping the whole way. Even when a third-generation zombie clawed at the window, he only gave it a slight glance before going back to sleep.
Sunlight streamed through the window onto him, and he was sleeping so comfortably.
Now that they’d reached their destination, he finally got up.
He stretched big and wide at the door.
Li Jiangbing watched him and thought it looked a bit like Zhou Wang.
The front of the lead vehicle was covered by Su Yu’s protective dome.
She didn’t expand it very large—just enough to cover the front and the front door, creating a small open space outside.
Because superpowers, like physical strength, could be depleted.
And Gao Yuxuan had been tirelessly instilling the concept of cost-effectiveness in everyone. At home, it didn’t matter—during practice, you could burn through as much as you wanted, and exhausting your limits could even raise your ceiling.
But out in the field, they’d learned to prioritize efficiency and conserve their energy.
Especially today—the situation in the city was far more severe than in the Tech New District. They had to save their strength for when it really counted.
As the door opened, a small area outside was under the protection of the dome, with zombies pushed to the edges.
But the moment the door opened, Mo Li shot out like a bolt.
Those sitting near the door saw that in the instant he sprang up, he was still a small cat; but when they looked through the window a moment later, he was a black panther bursting through the dome, pouncing into the dense crowd of zombies. By the time he landed, his body had swelled to the size of an elephant.
The middle schoolers pressed against the windows, squealing with excitement.
Mo Li let out a thunderous roar—like the king of the mountain, the tiger; like the king of the savanna, the lion.
Several third-generation zombies, driven by survival instinct, turned and fled.
But the masses of basic and second-generation zombies only surged forward.
Mo Li pounced and tore through them, spinning his body, lashing his long tail, swiping with his claws. He could crush several heads at once with a single bite.
In an instant, the space around the lead vehicle was cleared.
The middle schoolers: “Holy crap!”
Su Yu got out with Cui Haiyang. Cui Haiyang walked up to the gate and touched it. The door rolled open to both sides like an egg roll.
There were indeed many zombies in the courtyard, but before they could rush out, the large vehicles charged right in!
The bladed vehicles killed on contact—even more efficient than the previous method of taking heads one by one.
There were too many zombies outside, so the vehicles couldn’t stay on the street.
The four large buses filed in one after another.
Su Yu and Cui Haiyang also entered. The egg-roll gate unrolled again, returning to its original shape, sealing off the zombies on the street and Mo Li outside.
Mo Li fought fiercely on the street, killing off most of the zombies in front of the government compound. Then he turned, leaped, and as he landed on the wall, he had already shrunk back into a small black cat.
He gazed down at the scene inside the courtyard.
Before getting out of the vehicle, Jiang Cheng had already communicated to Mo Li through telepathy, telling him not to get too close. The new bladed vehicles were different from before—getting too close could easily result in accidental injury.
There were quite a few zombies in the courtyard. The four large buses, bumper to bumper, kept circling in the open space. Su Yu and Cui Haiyang couldn’t cross over either at the moment; the two crouched by the main gate, watching, with only a small protective dome deployed.
One said: “Any living people in there?”
The other said: “I think so—look, someone closed the gate.”
“Then what Jiang Cheng said isn’t right.”
“Wouldn’t that be better? Jiang Cheng herself would want to be wrong.”
As they spoke, their weapons suddenly extended and took down a zombie that had come running out of the guardhouse.
Unfortunately, Jiang Cheng was correct. There were no survivors in the municipal government building.
Just like the Development Zone Government in the Tech New District.
Zero survivors.
They’d left at 7:30 in the morning. Scanning the West District hadn’t taken long, and they’d set out from the Tech New District toward the city before noon.
By the time they finished clearing the municipal government, it was already 3:00 in the afternoon.
Everyone was starving. Mainly because there’d been no way to stop and eat in between.
They hadn’t worked this hard in days.
Compared to today’s tough battle at the municipal government, the Tech New District had been a breeze.
The municipal government was the city’s central hub—countless people came every day from morning till night to handle affairs, pick up materials, submit documents, and attend meetings.
It was an incredibly busy place.
Mayor Zheng’s head was carried downstairs by Jiang Cheng herself.
“He was an outstanding leader,” she said.
She paid her respects to him. Then she placed his head together with the other zombie corpses.
The earth-type superhumans would handle them all in one go.
The fire-types were already heating up food. The aroma of stuffed pancakes was wafting through the air—everyone was starving.
Gao Yuxuan stood with his hands on his hips: “Who closed that gate, anyway? I thought there might be survivors. Got my hopes up for nothing.”
Someone else sighed: “What was the point of closing that gate?”
There were zombies inside, and zombies outside.
Jiang Cheng gazed across the vast courtyard at the imposing steel gate in the distance.
“Because they couldn’t see outside, and there was no time to think about what was out there,” she said softly. “But they could see what was right in front of them—and in front of them were all zombies.”
“So they closed the door.”
The office door wouldn’t close properly—a zombie’s arm had gotten stuck, and more zombies kept piling up outside.
His colleagues desperately held the door shut. Mayor Zheng pressed the intercom button for the guardhouse.
“Close the main gate—”
“I order you to close the main gate!”
“Don’t let the zombies get out!”
They couldn’t hold it any longer. The office door burst open, and zombies flooded in.
Zhao Yi felt like giving up on thinking altogether.
Because the more he thought, the more terrified he became.
Jiang Cheng had been right about everything. The municipal government had also been targeted for elimination.
Everyone had already accepted Jiang Cheng’s prediction.
But how did they do it?
Had they released more virus at the municipal government than elsewhere?
Or was there some other mysterious method?
This “targeted” elimination was something you couldn’t think too deeply about.
But Zhao Yi didn’t ask Jiang Cheng again.
He had a feeling she’d just brush him off again.
She would surely say: “How would I know?”
That was actually unfair to Jiang Cheng.
Jiang Cheng truly didn’t know the specific method.
Just as she didn’t know how her memories had been locked, or how she’d been sent into this world.
Everyone started eating lunch.
The stuffed pancakes were delicious, but the new middle schoolers couldn’t really stomach them.
The image of those tall zombies they’d sliced through on the road, with hearts falling out, just wouldn’t leave their minds.
It killed their appetite.
Jiang Cheng bit into her pancake, chewed, and swallowed.
“Eat,” she said. “If you can’t eat, don’t come with us tomorrow.”
“Because we’re going to fight again later, and without energy, you won’t make it.”
Everyone stopped and looked at her.
Jiang Cheng glanced at the sky: “It’s still early. If we just go home now, the cost-effectiveness of this trip is way too low.”
At the words “cost-effectiveness,” everyone burst out laughing.
Gao Yuxuan puffed out his chest with his hands on his hips: “What’s so funny! Think about how much fuel these four vehicles burned just to get here! That stuff is non-renewable!”
Jiang Cheng laughed too.
After she stopped laughing, she said: “So let’s go take back the TV station.”
She said: “It’s not far anyway—both are inside the Second Ring.”
Just one was west of the Second Ring, and the other was outside the east side.
Alright then.
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