Many problems were discovered through practice.
For example, the armor everyone was using now—including the metal armor replicated by the metal-type users—was designed during the first zombie outbreak. It was a product born out of necessity.
Under those circumstances, the priority was speed and quantity.
The introduction of this armor had directly turned the tide in human-versus-zombie combat, drastically reducing casualties and slowing the growth of second-generation zombies.
The first outbreak had happened on a weekend. Apart from universities, all schools—from kindergarten to elementary to middle school—were empty. The kids were at home.
The armor had been designed mainly for adult zombies.
It focused on protecting key areas: shoulders, neck, arms, thighs, and calves.
Now, facing the little bean-sized zombies at Gaoxin School, the problem became clear.
At that height, when they raised their arms or jumped, the attack target was exactly the vulnerable waist and abdomen area—wide open.
During the first outbreak, there hadn’t been a mass gathering of elementary school zombies. Occasional child zombies were scattered—no high-frequency attacks on that area.
The hallways also made it hard to maneuver, forcing most ordinary people to fall back, leaving only the superpower users in front.
Guo Jun, Gao Yuxuan, and Wu Jiancheng were ranged attackers—they could throw fireballs and discharge electricity from a distance.
Guo Jun seemed to grow fiercer with each fight. After several close calls where a bean-sized zombie almost reached his belly, he got desperate—his electric current suddenly thickened, and with a boom, one little zombie’s head was blown apart by the blast.
Gao Yuxuan: “Holy shit!”
Everyone started to realize that ranged superpower users didn’t always mix well in teams.
When Wu Jiancheng threw a fireball, even though it went far, the heat still made people nearby uncomfortable.
Fire-types were best suited for solo combat.
When a swarm of little ones charged, Sister Pan—her eyes filled with reluctance—slammed her hand on the ground. Several ridges rose from the concrete floor in the hallway.
The little zombies tripped—some even went flying—and tumbled right in front of everyone.
People rushed forward, one shovel per head, chopping them off.
A nightmare.
This was the most nightmarish zombie-killing experience yet—tied only with the baby zombies flopping like fish at Renxin Hospital.
Li Jiangbing sighed as he swung his shovel.
Facing adult zombies, he had to raise the shovel to chest level, like a bayonet charge.
Facing the little beans, his arms hung down, holding the crescent spade flat. A child’s neck was much thinner than an adult’s—less force required.
Li Jiangbing hung his arms and swung shovel after shovel—each swing took off one little head.
Moli darted into the second-floor hallway from outside the building.
He let out a huff and shot forward.
Stepping off the floor, springing off walls, even pausing briefly on the ceiling—he became a streak of black shadow. From one end of the hallway to the other, he left behind a trail of neck-snapped corpses.
Zhou Wang and Xiao Huang were also suited for solo combat.
Su Yu could serve as a shield for everyone.
Bit by bit, they adjusted and found the best ways to fight alongside the superpower users.
In the end, the schoolyard was mostly cleared of zombies.
The remaining nooks and crannies were left to Moli, Zhou Wang, and Xiao Huang to sweep. One relied on speed, two on perception—they were the best finishers.
But only a dozen or so children were rescued.
Out of such a large school, only a dozen elementary school students had survived.
They were all starving. First question: “Uncle, do you have any food?”
“Auntie, do you have any food?”
They’d survived the past few days by rummaging through backpacks and lockers for snacks that classmates had smuggled to school against the rules.
They smelled awful.
Their young faces were etched with exhaustion.
Hesitantly, they asked, “Do you know where my mom and dad are?”
No one could answer.
Because everyone knew that those children’s mothers’ heads were likely rolling somewhere on Xueqian Street.
A bunch of unmarried young men and women—none of them particularly good with kids.
All they could say was, “I don’t know.”
The children asked, “Can you take me home?”
Everyone felt stuck again.
Xiao Huang finished his sweep and walked over. “There are still students waiting for us at the middle school next door. That’s urgent—let’s handle that first.”
“You kids come with us and get on the bus first.”
“Come over here and line up—boys in one line, girls in the other.”
The children suddenly found their anchor. They quickly formed two lines in front of Xiao Huang.
They even adjusted themselves automatically—if the person in front completely blocked your view, that meant you were shorter, so you moved forward to switch spots.
In about ten seconds, they’d arranged themselves from shortest to tallest—two neat, orderly rows.
Everyone breathed a huge sigh of relief—and felt a pang of sorrow.
When Moli appeared in his leopard-sized form, the kids weren’t scared at all.
“He’s so amazing.”
“One bite, one zombie.”
“Is he a leopard?”
Jiang Cheng answered, “No, he’s my cat.”
She extended her hand. Moli shrank back down, hopped up her arm, and landed on her shoulder.
The kids were stunned: “Whoa~~~”
Jiang Cheng told them, “Because of the zombie virus, a lot of people have developed superpowers—water, fire, electricity, earth, and so on. That auntie over there can make the floor rise up—she’s an earth-type user.”
“My little cat also got a superpower—he can grow big, become very powerful, and help us kill zombies and save people.”
The children eagerly chimed in, “I know! I know!”
“Teacher Zhang can make fire! He locked us in the classroom and went to burn the zombies.”
“Meng Mingzhi, a sixth-grader, can make water—only a little bit. She left us drinking water and said she’d go find us food, but she never came back.”
“Did you see her?”
Their voices were so young, so innocent.
Su Yu felt like she couldn’t breathe.
Xiao Huang said, “Alright, no more talking. Time to board.”
The children obediently followed.
The convoy continued toward the middle school.
Between them were two streets and a sports stadium. Whenever schools or companies in the development zone held events, they used this central stadium.
Luckily, there had been no events on the 29th. There were a few scattered zombies—ignored for now—the middle school came first.
Gaoxin Middle School currently only had a junior high division. The high school division had been in planning, with enrollment set for September, but then the outbreak hit. After it ended, there weren’t enough students or teachers left.
So they announced the suspension of the high school division.
Through real-world practice, a new combat strategy had basically taken shape.
First, send Moli and the blade buses in to clear the large groups of zombies on campus.
The blade buses were incredibly efficient.
The middle school students were close to adult height.
This time, the metal-type users were much more comfortable—they didn’t have to press their faces against the glass and look down to find the neck height of bean-sized zombies.
The “tongues”—or “guillotines”—that extended from the bus varied in length, clearly showing the gap in strength between individual metal-type users.
But overall, their improvement was very fast.
Mainly because they’d been using their powers nonstop the past few days—making armor, weapons, and all sorts of other things. Though individuals varied, the group’s overall growth was rapid.
Li Jiangbing’s power was also advancing at a remarkable pace.
That was because he trained to exhaustion every night—ear drums aching, vision blurry, eyeballs throbbing.
During the day, though, he just used his power for things like cleaning and washing dogs—so others didn’t notice.
But Jiang Cheng would smile when she saw him chasing dogs with water balls—even multiple ones chasing several dogs at once.
Li Jiangbing was truly someone who took advice well.
He might not be exceptionally clever on his own, but with the right friends and the right leader, being coachable became one of his greatest strengths.
Moli’s size grew again—not as jaw-dropping as his maximum, but still much larger than at the elementary school.
His back was as high as a person’s shoulder—adults had to look up at him.
Everyone quickly understood the significance of this height: one bite, one crushed skull.
He charged recklessly through the zombies.
After watching for a while, they noticed that the zombies couldn’t even break through his fur.
When there were too many, occasionally one would grab hold of his coat. Moli would instantly flare his fur out and blast the zombie off.
Su Yu unexpectedly thought: then their faces would be crushed too—families wouldn’t be able to identify the bodies.
Immediately, she felt stupid.
Their families might not even be alive. Most deaths didn’t involve any identification process anyway. Corpses were handled in bulk—burned last time, buried this time.
Su Yu sighed.
Zhou Wang returned. “We found them.”
When they entered the school, they’d already seen some zombie corpses. The traces of battle recorded the students’ resistance and self-rescue efforts.
The surviving students had fought and retreated all the way into the cafeteria, barricading the doors.
Among them were several parents, and two cafeteria aunties had also survived.
The adults cooked meals for the children.
After holding out until today, they felt they couldn’t just wait to die. But rushing out without armor was too dangerous.
Only four parents had come wearing armor to find their children. One of them was Wang Changhe’s wife.
She said, “We need to call for help.”
Everyone was pessimistic. “Who can we call?”
Some parents had phones, but the emergency number was useless. They tried the hotline for the temporary emergency command center from the last outbreak—it was now disconnected.
But Wang Changhe’s wife refused to give up. Her name was Xiao Dan, and her daughter was Wang Yunya.
As the saying goes: people from the same family don’t stray far in character. The whole family had a bit of boldness in common.
Wang Changhe was gutsy, and so was Xiao Dan—otherwise, she wouldn’t have come alone to save her daughter.
Wang Yunya had awakened a fire-type superpower. Over the past two days, she’d been training herself in the cafeteria—if there weren’t too many zombies, she could hold her own.
A few others in the cafeteria had superpowers too.
Xiao Dan said, “I want to try contacting our neighborhood’s interim committee.”
During the first outbreak, Jixiang Jiayuan had been organized nearly as well as Youth Apartments.
If even the people at Jixiang Jiayuan couldn’t be reached, Xiao Dan considered trying Youth Apartments.
She and her husband had gone zombie-killing with the Youth Apartments crew before—she knew their combat capability well.
She didn’t have a phone, nor did she know Zhou Wang’s number. But she knew that during the disaster, both neighborhoods had posted their interim committee contact lists on their owners’ forums. A few armored people organized a plan to charge the lab building—it was the only place with internet-connected computers.
Wang Yunya was among the stronger superpower users there, so she had to go—ordinary people were at greater risk.
Mother and daughter had argued back and forth over who should wear the armor.
Finally, one parent gave up their armor. It made more sense for a superpower user to wear it—better odds than sending an ordinary person.
So Xiao Dan, another parent, and a few superpowered students burst out of the cafeteria, fought through the dangers, made it to the lab building, found a computer with internet access, looked up Zhou Wang’s number, and called for help.
They’d been waiting in the office ever since, with zombies occasionally banging on the door—nerve-wracking.
Finally, past noon, car horns echoed across the campus, drawing the zombies away.
Everyone looked out the window—
The buses seemed alive, blades sprouting from their bodies to reap zombie heads.
And a beast as big as an elephant was taking out zombies one bite at a time.
Everyone stared in disbelief.
Wang Yunya watched for a long time, then said uncertainly, “That looks like a cat?”
Everyone pressed against the glass, peering hard. Finally, they confirmed: “Yeah—it’s a cat!”
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