Jiang Cheng ultimately never made it to Q City.
Because Q City’s survivors were fleeing outward.
An hour after leaving D City, the sky ahead began to darken. Going further, they entered the rain zone.
Q City was a city backed by mountains and facing the sea. Several roads were broken. Some from foundation collapse. Some purely washed out by flash floods.
Continuing forward, vehicles began appearing going the opposite direction.
Cars, motorcycles, tricycles, even bicycles. The survivors were using every means of transport they could find to flee Q City.
“Tsunami!” They said. “Flash floods came down too! Heaven just won’t let people live!”
The blade vehicles pushed upstream. Going further, the ground began to flood.
Fortunately, the blade vehicles were converted from large buses with high chassis—they could still keep going forward.
Until the floodwaters surged over.
Li Jiangbing stood at the front beside the driver. The oncoming floodwaters split apart before them, flowing around the blade vehicle to both sides.
The floodwaters carried living people and zombies alike. The zombies floundered clumsily in the water, trying to bite the living.
The metal-type superpower user accompanying the vehicle changed the blade edges on the body into grab bars. People drifting past the vehicle grabbed the bars and were saved.
Jiang Cheng gazed at the vast water before her. After a long while, she said: “Turn around. Go back.”
She’d asked Li Feng whether Q City’s situation was disaster-level.
Now “they” had given her the answer.
In front of her very eyes—flash floods and tsunami, answering loudly: [Yes, it’s a natural disaster.]
Uncle Jiang had said the extreme cold air mass moved west, and the east had bred a Zombie Emperor.
The west was natural disaster, the east was human calamity.
Now, Jiang Cheng had come to the east, and the east was the natural disaster.
Human calamity could only be in the west.
The Zombie Emperor was in the west.
Su Yu was heading straight for the Zombie Emperor and his zombie army.
Li Jiangbing’s expression was extremely grim.
Everyone understood now.
Jiang Cheng closed her eyes: “Go back. We head west. To chase after Su Yu.”
—
At this moment, nearly 1,500 kilometers away from Jiang Cheng, Su Yu and her people looked at the vast sea of zombies and also knew they’d been deceived.
They’d traveled west the whole way, passing through the central region that extreme cold had once covered, fully expecting it to get colder the further west they went.
The central region still bore heavy traces of the extreme cold. Many corpses they saw along the way had frozen to death in shelters.
Radio—that thing—wasn’t widespread.
It seemed very common in foreign movies, but in reality, in this country it was very uncommon, a very niche thing.
Not every survivor settlement could have a shortwave radio.
Nor did everyone who heard the mysterious man’s “extreme cold” prediction believe it.
Even if they believed it, not everyone had a concept of “extreme cold.” Probably finding a couple more thick clothes, finding some wood to stockpile—that was their response to “extreme cold.”
The only fortunate thing was that death in sleep had no pain. Close your eyes at night, die in the night.
The central region had once been a prosperous inland area. After the extreme cold, it became a no-man’s land. Those cities and towns had no living people, like ghost cities.
Too many corpses were rotting—no ability to deal with them at all. This place would soon become a plague zone, no longer habitable.
Zhou Wang suggested the convoy pass through quickly and reach the west as soon as possible to find a suitable habitat.
Su Yu adopted his suggestion.
Su Yu, Cui Haiyang, and Gao Yuxuan had always been core forces of the youth apartments. The three of them had been very active from the youth apartments to the provisional government.
But in reality, they were just screws in a formed system. None of them had ever been a true leader.
Only Zhou Wang had truly independently led and managed a community.
So the team naturally formed a situation where Su Yu was the spiritual leader and Zhou Wang was the actual manager.
Passing through the central no-man’s-land ghost cities, the terrain rose. Mountains became noticeably more numerous.
They saw cities again. From here, they’d entered the western region.
They’d originally thought it would be very cold, prepared to face extreme cold.
Jiang Cheng had given them a lot of coal, a lot of bedding, specifically to resist the cold.
It turned out the western region was completely spring temperature—even a few degrees warmer than S City when they’d first set out.
Confusing.
Su Yu said: “Where did the extreme cold go?”
No one could answer.
Actually, everyone was very happy there was no extreme cold. No one wanted to live the winter-hibernation life. People needed to be outdoors—they didn’t want to be hibernating animals.
In this happy atmosphere, Su Yu felt a faint unease in her heart.
Based on this unease, although the city’s high-rises were right before their eyes, Su Yu still decided not to enter the city—tonight they’d camp in the open wilderness on the outskirts.
Everyone was naturally very disappointed.
Because the central region was covered in rotting corpses, and they feared plague transmission, they hadn’t stopped in any city—two nights in a row in the wilderness.
Everyone longed to sleep in a real bed.
Zhou Wang stepped forward to soothe everyone: “Big cities have many zombies. There might be mutant zombies. By the time we get in, it’ll be dark, and there’s no electricity. Too dangerous. We’ll enter the city tomorrow morning—at least then we can see the zombies coming.”
So everyone stopped complaining.
Su Yu breathed a sigh of relief.
Thank goodness for Zhou Wang. She actually wasn’t good at management.
If only Lesi were here—Lesi was better with words than her.
That night, like the previous two, the earth-types built houses and long communal bunks.
Everyone moved the stoves into the houses. It was still a bit cold at night. The temporary houses had no sealed windows, so heating was still needed.
They also had several people specifically keep watch. In case extreme cold suddenly descended, the night watchers could quickly wake the fire-types and immediately light fires for warmth.
For this, the fire-types were distributed very evenly among the houses.
All preparations were made under the expectation of “about to encounter extreme cold.”
But the cold that night was just normal spring night temperature.
—
By the time dawn broke, the extreme cold hadn’t come—but the zombie tide had.
The ground shook, startling the drowsy night watchers.
They thought it was another earthquake.
Then they saw clearly the zombies pouring out from the city in the distance.
The night watcher’s heart-rending voice rang out in the dawn: “Zombies are coming! Zombies are coming—! Zomb—”
Everyone was startled awake.
In an instant, white light swept over everyone, expanding, like a giant inverted bowl, covering even the hastily built houses.
Su Yu’s shield was indeed formidable.
After experiencing the earthquake and withstanding half a building, it had become even more formidable.
Before, when this shield rose, everyone felt at ease.
But this time, after everyone hurriedly put on armor, grabbed weapons, and ran out of the houses, all faces turned deathly pale—
The zombies they’d seen in the past ten months combined might not equal this many.
Black and dense, vast and endless.
They’d never seen so many zombies—it seemed like sheer numbers alone could trample humanity to death.
Everyone was frozen.
Countless roars rose up.
Some faces went white. Some covered their ears.
When terrifying things reached a certain scale, it was hair-raising.
The zombies ran, even kicking up massive dust clouds.
All kinds of mutant zombies were already visible. Snake-shaped, spider-shaped, three-headed six-armed, all varieties—like a human body deformity fashion show.
Dust rolled in.
People with extremely rich combat experience like Gao Yuxuan and Cui Haiyang roared: “Don’t space out! Get to the front! Hurry! Buy time! Buy time—!”
Why buy time?
Because the shield had to be sustained by Su Yu.
It wasn’t infinite.
It would exhaust, weaken, disappear.
Especially since, to protect everyone, this shield was extraordinarily large.
The larger the shield, the more superpower it consumed—meaning the shorter it could last.
They had to buy time!
Fight!
Destroy!
Many brave people rushed to the very front, toes against the shield.
Zombies, of course, wouldn’t stop just because they saw a shield.
The zombie tide slammed violently into the shield.
Su Yu felt as if her chest had taken a hammer blow.
The last time she’d felt this was the earthquake night, withstanding half a building.
The zombies pounded frantically on the shield. Half a step inside the shield was so much fresh, tender flesh and blood—how could zombies not go mad?
Not a single primitive zombie.
At minimum, they were second-generation.
Countless mutant zombies, tentacles or pincers whipping and smashing with force.
Gao Yuxuan released his highest-voltage electricity, striving for instant kills.
Cui Haiyang set a large iron plate on the ground. The iron plate rapidly became an iron frame, the top of the frame becoming a guillotine-like long blade at neck height. The guillotine extended and retracted, harvesting a swath of heads with each snap.
Many who’d come for the “extreme cold” were fire-type superpower users.
Fireballs were thrown out as if they cost nothing.
Earth-types knelt on the ground, hands pressing into the soil. On the land outside the shield, stone spikes jutted up one after another, stabbing from below straight into brains.
And a large number of ordinary people held crescent-blade shovels, cutting off zombie heads shovel by shovel!
One careless moment—an extended crescent-blade shovel was grabbed by a zombie. Too slow to let go in time, and the person was yanked out!
Su Yu’s shield was one-way, divided into “inside” and “outside.”
Physical and superpower attacks from outside were blocked.
From inside, both physical and superpower attacks could extend out. Human bodies could too.
Weapons could extend out, hands could extend out. As long as the body was still “inside,” it could be pulled back.
But once the body was completely out, having left the shield, it couldn’t come back in.
Because under the current circumstances, Su Yu couldn’t reverse the shield’s “inside” and “outside” for a single person, nor open a small hole for one person.
She could before—that was because the number of zombies was small, manageable.
Now the zombies outside were densely packed, lunging at the shield.
The ones in front fell as corpses, the ones behind stepped on the corpses and kept lunging.
No way to do fine control—completely no way.
The corpses outside the shield piled up layer by layer, but the zombies behind were endless. No one knew how many zombies there actually were.
In the distance, more than a dozen giant zombies could be seen, evenly spaced, not advancing—like generals holding the line.
Everyone’s adrenaline was secreting madly!
People kept being yanked out of the shield, immediately submerged by zombies—not even a scream, too fast.
The front row had already rotated several rounds.
Everyone who retreated had arm muscles in spasms.
Cui Haiyang gripped the iron frame, the large guillotine snapping out.
A tentacle had been waiting for this moment for a long time.
The instant the guillotine extended out of the shield to cut a zombie’s head, the tentacle shot out like lightning, wrapped around the guillotine, and pulled outward.
Cui Haiyang let go very quickly, but by the time he released, both his hands had already extended outside the shield.
Another tentacle wrapped around his wrist.
Cui Haiyang was yanked out of the shield.
“Haiyang—!” Gao Yuxuan screamed shrilly!
Gao Yuxuan pushed his superpower to an intensity he’d never reached before.
Dozens of electric currents pierced through the shield, attacking the heads of the zombies around Cui Haiyang.
Cui Haiyang controlled the guillotine iron frame, instantly deforming it, wrapping around himself to form an iron cage-like protection. The iron cage also shot out blades. Cui Haiyang roared, ramming in all directions with the iron cage, trying to find himself a way out.
Cui Haiyang had always been a soul figure in the combat team.
Seeing him trapped, fire-types, metal-types, and earth-types madly pushed their superpowers to attack the zombies around Cui Haiyang.
But it was useless.
Zombies swarmed up layer by layer.
Blocking the line of sight.
Layer by layer.
Completely unable to see anymore.
Suddenly a tentacle whipped something up into the sky.
Something spun rapidly, hung in the air, fell, smashed onto the shield, and bounced off hard.
Gao Yuxuan saw it clearly.
It was Cui Haiyang’s iron cage from moments ago.
Gao Yuxuan let out a heart-rending sound: “Haiyang—!”
Despair surged into everyone’s hearts, including Su Yu’s.
Even though the front was entirely people, they could still see the giants in the distance.
Standing there, not advancing.
Su Yu knew—if so many giants came forward to attack, the time the shield could hold would be cut in half, exponentially.
Su Yu’s voice was shrill. This girl who usually spoke softly and gently screamed shrilly: “Brother Zhou—! Get everyone to retreat! Retreat! Get everyone on the vehicles and retreat! I’ll hold! Quick, retreat! I’ll hold!”
Zhou Wang had just retreated from the front line, both arms trembling.
At this density of zombies, even he didn’t dare leave the shield. Wind-type superpowers couldn’t be used—it was all arm strength.
Muscles overused, cramping in pain.
Retreat?
Zhou Wang looked at the backs of his comrades fighting desperately ahead.
He turned his head, looked behind.
No good.
Right now the zombies were gathered on the west side because everyone was facing the enemy head-on, all gathered there.
If they got on the vehicles and retreated, the commotion would be too great—the zombies would bypass the shield and pursue.
There were many, many speed zombies.
There were many, many mutant zombies—no telling what special abilities they had.
In the distance there were even so many giant zombies, terrifying.
“Terrifying”—sometimes it was just an objective statement, like Zhou Wang at this moment.
He looked at the dense front line on the west, then at the empty rear on the east.
Everything seemed like slow motion. Those roars, those shouts sounded so faint in his ears, unreal.
Zhou Wang didn’t want to die.
Heaven had given him a wind-type superpower precisely so he wouldn’t die—that was how he’d always understood it.
How could he die here.
Zhou Wang’s lips trembled.
“N-no, no—that way we can’t escape.” He said. “You—you hold on, I…”
His speech went from stammering to fluent: “I’ll take people around to the back to draw their attention, lure them away from this side, then everyone can retreat.”
At this moment, Su Yu simply couldn’t think.
Too many zombies—especially many mutant zombies with enormous strength, exceeding what the shield could offset. The excess force would, to a certain degree, backlash onto Su Yu.
That earthquake night, her entire body had cracked—only Zhang Lesi had pulled her back from the King of Hell’s grasp.
Now, her whole body was in pain.
“Hurry up! Hurry up!” She shouted.
Whatever he was doing, hurry!
Zhou Wang responded “Okay! Okay! You hold on! You hold on!”
Zhou Wang turned and ran.
Su Yu thought he’d gone to “take people.” He’d said he was going around to the back to draw the zombies’ attention.
But Zhou Wang just ran east.
The moment Zhou Wang’s foot stepped out of the shield, he suddenly remembered something.
He hesitated for an instant, then turned and dashed swiftly into one of the houses.
Three little kids were hiding in the house, too frightened to speak.
Zhou Wang rushed in, grabbed them: “Come! Come with me!”
In front of the house was the flatbed cart used last night to move the iron stoves. Zhou Wang put the three children on it: “Sit tight, hold on!”
Air currents condensed and rose from around him. The flatbed cart floated slightly off the ground, defying gravity.
Zhou Wang started running, taking the flatbed cart out of the shield from the east.
Leaving everyone behind, leaving Su Yu and Gao Yuxuan behind, fleeing alone with the three little kids.
Su Yu’s pupils suddenly dilated.
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