Minghe City was densely populated. Many vehicles were strewn along both sides of the city’s main roads, with zombies clustered in small groups of three to five nearby.
Large pools of blood covered the road. Yan Tingting didn’t dare let her guard down—she retracted her vines, which had transformed into wooden spikes, and rolled up the car windows tightly.
As she was about to pass near the residential buildings, a burst of chaotic footsteps came from about seven or eight hundred meters ahead. Listening carefully, Yan Tingting confirmed it was a small zombie horde.
In the Apocalypse, the worst thing possible was being surrounded by zombies. Yan Tingting quickly turned the car around, preparing to detour around them. The next moment, her expression changed, and she began rapidly backing away.
Something was wrong. It was as if these zombies had all been lured over at the same time.
“Host, run!” The System’s mechanical voice was urgent.
Yan Tingting’s voice was cold and sinister. “Tell me a little later next time, and I might just get to meet the King of Hell.” Other people’s Systems had all kinds of cheats—detecting dangers, producing all sorts of spirit medicines, leading their hosts to the peak of life. Hers was just a useless little thing she couldn’t count on.
“Host, you have forty minutes left until your death! Ahhh!” Three alarm-like sounds rang out in Yan Tingting’s mind, and then, like a clock, a steady tick-tock of the second hand began looping endlessly in her head.
Yan Tingting froze for a moment.
Wait, why was there a Death Countdown now? Was this thing meant to see her off to her grave?
But now wasn’t the time to dwell on this. Aside from the direction she’d come from, which was relatively calm, zombies were surging in from every other direction.
How could it be such a coincidence that they’d left her such an obvious escape route? There was definitely a trap.
She thought for a moment, then sharply turned the wheel and drove into a hidden side alley. Abandoning the car, she slipped through a small side door into a store with its doors wide open.
After taking out the few zombies inside, Yan Tingting bounded up the stairs several steps at a time, and from a second-floor side window, used her vines to leap across two adjacent shops before finally stopping.
Then she hid behind the curtains, carefully observing the situation outside. Yan Tingting quickly spotted what was off—several waves of zombies had indeed been deliberately lured by someone.
Following the sounds, the zombie horde soon surged together into the alley where Yan Tingting had just parked her car.
After a long twenty minutes or so, the zombies, having found nothing, slowly retreated from the alley.
Two fleeting black figures lured the zombies elsewhere, and then a dozen or so men armed with knives and clubs walked out of the supermarket across the street.
Yan Tingting immediately spotted the burly man in the center with his hands in his pockets. He swaggered along in the middle of the group, his eyes gleaming with shrewdness and malice.
If she guessed right, this man was the leader.
“System, do you know how many Ability Users there are?” Yan Tingting calmly communicated with Xiao Yuan in her mind.
“There are ten first-level ability users and one second-level ability user. You’re no match for that second-level ability user, Host. Why don’t you hide in the Spatial Dimension!” The System’s anxiety was soothed by Yan Tingting’s composure.
Worst case, the Host could just hide in the Spatial Dimension. They had a cheat—what was there to fear?
“Stealing someone’s property is like killing their parents. I have a blood feud with them, System.” Yan Tingting’s clear, bright eyes stared fixedly at the dozen or so men, carefully tracking their movements.
Her things wouldn’t be so easy to take.
With just over twenty minutes left before Yan Tingting’s death, Yan Tingting suddenly spoke up. “Is the man in the middle a second-level ability user?”
“That’s him. Host, how did you know?”
Yan Tingting curled her lips. “I figured it out with my toes, of course!”
“Boss, no one’s here.” Two men holding clubs circled the car, checking it over, then reported to Zhang Zhiming in the middle.
The burly, shrewd man—Zhang Zhiming—nodded, looked around, and laughed wildly. “Today, let’s have the brothers play a game of cat and mouse.”
The crowd burst into laughter. “The boss is right!”
Yan Tingting was also chattering loudly with the System in her head. “System, have you ever heard the story of waiting by the tree stump for a rabbit?”
“No! Is there rabbit to eat?” Xiao Yuan was a bit useless.
Yan Tingting: “…” Her little brother really wasn’t playing along!
“Never mind. It’s about a clever hunter and a foolish rabbit that delivers itself to his door.” It was fine—she could smooth it over.
Nearly twenty people split into two directions and entered the shops on either side.
Yan Tingting stretched out her palm, and green vines formed into the shape of a bow. She raised the bow and aimed toward the doorway.
Soon, the sound of messy footsteps reached Yan Tingting’s ears. The footsteps were very light—probably five or six people coming.
As the footsteps drew closer, she slowed her breathing. With a turn of her body, three green arrows shot through the air. The three people who had just burst into the room instantly collapsed, their wide-open eyes full of confusion.
The remaining few turned and fled. Panicked voices rang out. “Boss, she’s—” Before the words were finished, a sharp sword pierced through their heads, green blood dripping down the arrows.
Yan Tingting gripped the arrow in her hand and quickly moved to another shop, hiding.
Soon, a dozen or so people surrounded the house from before. Through a mirror in the room, Yan Tingting quickly saw the situation across the small window.
Zhang Zhiming arrived at the shop with his men and saw the several corpses lying on the stairs. His face darkened. “So it’s an ability user.” His brows knitted together. The ones who died were all ability users—could the one who killed them be a second-level ability user?
Not daring to take the risk, he drove two ordinary people at the back of the group forward. “You two, lead the way.”
The two men instantly turned pale, but they didn’t dare resist. Trembling, they stepped around the corpses and climbed the stairs.
The moment their heads appeared, three arrows shot through the air, piercing their brows. The third arrow, which missed, embedded itself in the wall, and the wall instantly cracked outward.
“Bo… Boss, I think we’ve provoked someone dangerous. Let’s run!” Wang Li behind him was bloodless, his whole body trembling.
A flash of viciousness passed through Zhang Zhiming’s eyes, and he kicked the man violently aside. “Run? Run where? No matter how strong, she’s just one person, and she’s in that house across the way. Have everyone surround her. Today I’m going to chop off her arms and legs and feed them to the zombies.”
The moment Zhang Zhiming finished speaking, his entire body was covered in a layer of gold, and he flashed toward Yan Tingting’s direction.
At the same time, the ability users in the other directions all moved out at once, surrounding the shop where Yan Tingting was.
By the time several Ability Users had all run to the store, the sound of an engine starting came from the small road. The off-road vehicle burst out like a flying arrow, quickly leaving them far behind.
Yan Tingting rolled down the car window. From a distance, Zhang Zhiming saw a hand raise its middle finger, then wave back and forth… as if mocking his incompetence.