Coriander Safe City——
A towering, broad-shouldered man with a full beard, standing two meters tall, was looking at the group chat.
“Has the newcomer still not accepted the wood I sent? Could it be that the Cosmic Lord scared them so badly they don’t dare interact with the other city lords?”
But it didn’t really matter. He had only sent the wood to the newcomer in the first place to make himself seem harmless and build a little goodwill.
Even if a newcomer’s goodwill probably wasn’t worth much, who knew?
Besides, one ton of wood wasn’t much to him anyway.
It was the same with the three energy crystals he had given away—what could three energy crystals even do? Better to give them to Withered Star and hope that, out of gratitude, he would share more information.
The real problem right now was that the city’s grain reserves were almost empty.
The man looked at the residents working hard to build quarantine shelters and trying to set up protective nets along the upper sections of the city walls. Everyone looked busy, but the actual progress was almost nonexistent.
The residents were all thin and emaciated, dressed in rags, and spoke weakly, with barely any energy left.
He had originally thought they might be able to find food in this world, but now they couldn’t even get out through the city gates.
If he didn’t let the residents eat their fill soon, forget killing zombies—they might end up killing the city lord first.
The man thought for a moment, then continued posting in the group chat:
[My safe city is already building quarantine shelters. I hope we can survive this. My AI is basically useless intelligence—it only ever replies, “Sorry, I cannot recognize your question.” Thankfully, I still have Withered Star’s advice, sob sob sob, grateful to the big boss, may you live a long and peaceful life~]
[All bosses, I’m begging to buy food. The residents really can’t hold on anymore. I’m willing to trade every resource in the safe city for food! Please, please, please, sob sob sob!]
For a long time, no one responded.
Eventually, Withered Star Safe City sent a message:
[I suggest you stop thinking about trading for food. Food is hard currency in every world—no one will sell it.]
[Gu Gaga Safe City: I’m willing to sell, but I want energy crystals—and you don’t even have any.]
[Withered Star Safe City: The only way for a safe city that has run out of food to survive is to take the residents outside and fight for resources. Whether you live or die depends on your own fate.]
The city lord of Coriander Safe City felt half his heart turn cold.
He looked at his handful of residents—barely a few dozen people, every single one of them already starving—then climbed the city lord’s tower and looked down.
—Outside the city, thousands upon thousands of zombies were gathering, constantly howling as they pressed closer.
He did want to fight his way out.
But the problem was—how the hell was he supposed to fight that?!
His safe city’s coordinates had originally been set somewhere like a stadium. When he looked around, there hadn’t been a single person in sight. It must have been abandoned even before the apocalypse.
At the time, he had even thought this world looked safer than the previous one.
Then the twenty-person scouting team he sent out somehow came back dragging this massive horde of zombies behind them.
‘Were you guys freaking triggers? How did you set off a bomb like that?!’
He was utterly desperate.
No food. No weapons. Surrounded on every side.
Then he checked the status of the city walls—it was already showing 40% damage.
Once it reached 100%, the zombies would break through, and everyone would die.
Energy crystals.
He needed energy crystals to repair the walls.
The burly man spun around and shouted at the residents:
“Get ropes! Lasso the zombies and kill them! Kill them and harvest the energy crystals!”
But the residents didn’t move.
Someone shouted in complaint:
“If you want us to kill zombies, we need strength first! We only ate one meal today!”
“Yeah! Yesterday we only ate two meals!”
Not only the original residents of Coriander Safe City, but even the newcomers recruited from the previous world joined in.
“The city lord can’t just refuse to feed us!”
“Open the stores! Give us food! Otherwise, we’re not working anymore!”
“Right! We quit!”
Some people quietly pulled their family members aside and tried to stop them.
“Dad, don’t get involved. What if the city lord expels you?”
“What’s there to be afraid of? A safe city needs enough residents to leave this world. He’s desperate for manpower!”
“Exactly! Everyone, don’t be afraid! His guard squad has been reduced to this few people—what is there to fear?!”
The burly man’s expression gradually shifted from anxiety, to helplessness, and finally to complete blankness.
The city guard stepped forward to maintain order, but it had little effect.
“City Lord, what should we do?”
“Should we detain the troublemakers?”
The man shook his head.
Then, gritting his teeth, he pulled out a gun and shot one of the loudest protesters in the head.
The resident collapsed to the ground.
The chaotic scene instantly fell silent.
Still holding the gun in a firing stance, the man said coldly:
“Anyone who refuses to work—dies.”
The residents obediently returned to hunting zombies and extracting energy crystals.
It was a foolish method. The rate at which the residents could capture zombies and extract their energy crystals couldn’t keep up with the rate at which the zombies were damaging the city walls.
But at least it could delay the inevitable collapse.
Maybe—just maybe—that delay would create a chance to survive.
That was what the man told himself.
In truth, he no longer believed there was any real hope. His eyes were filled with despair.
The only comfort he had left was that, in this dangerous world, there was someone even worse off than he was.
He closed his eyes, hiding the faint tears gathering there.
Stay strong, Wen Huahua. You’re not the most miserable one.
His residents had already followed him through an entire world, yet even now they still refused to fully obey his orders.
The newcomer’s residents hadn’t even been trained or integrated yet.
They should be even harder to control.
In a world where viruses could infect people and unity was fragile, things were bound to go badly.
Maybe, by now, the newcomer’s city had already fallen.
***
“Break—!”
The door was smashed open.
A squad wearing gas masks stood at the entrance with guns raised, covering one another as they quickly took down the few zombies that tried to rush out.
The newcomer, Cheng Qisheng, was watching the Blue Sea tactical squad clear the zombies.
“Finish them off!”
“Check!”
More gunshots rang out—bang, bang—and the zombies lying on the ground had their heads blown apart to make absolutely certain they were dead.
It might have seemed like a waste of ammunition, but it reduced the risk as much as possible.
The combat squad switched on their flashlights, sweeping the room from the doorway before cautiously entering with their guns raised.
Whenever they encountered a place that could conceal a person—cabinets, rice jars, and the like—one member would use a hooked pole to open it from a distance while the others kept their guns trained on it from a safe range.
If a zombie leapt out, it would be killed immediately.
Only after every corner had been checked did the squad withdraw.
“Report: room cleared, no abnormalities.”
The squad leader nodded and gave the order:
“Harvest team, move in!”
The harvesting team from the logistics group immediately rushed forward.
Everyone wore gloves. Some used small cutters to slice open the zombies’ skulls, while others used tweezers to extract diamond-like energy crystals from inside.
Once removed, the crystals were sprayed clean with high-pressure sprayers and carefully stored in bags.
These energy crystals were something the great Creator God required.
They had to be properly collected and transported back to the Safe City as an offering.
Throughout the entire process, the combat squad remained armed and on high alert, watching the surroundings and protecting the harvesting team while they worked.
“Report! One energy crystal recovered!”
Not every zombie had a crystal inside its head.
Getting one crystal from four kills was already considered good.
The captain nodded.
“Next target group!”
The fifteen-member team, including the harvesting unit, continued advancing.
There were fifty such teams operating in this village.
At the village entrance, the logistics group had already finished off the wounded and was now dealing with hundreds of corpses piled together.
Those hundreds of zombie corpses had been gathered by using drones to lure the wandering zombies into an open area, after which mortar shells had been fired into the crowd to wipe them out in a concentrated strike.
The zombies trapped inside houses, or those that for various reasons hadn’t followed the drones into the open, became targets for the fifty combat squads.
While the logistics team cut open zombie skulls and the combat squads cleared the buildings one by one, the drone unit also operated drones high overhead, monitoring the battlefield and reporting the coordinates of zombie positions.
From the moment the reconnaissance vanguard set out, discovered the zombie village, launched the attack, and completely cleared the area, only four hours had passed.
Most of that time, in fact, had been spent traveling.
Now that the battle was over, the entire village had been sealed off by the combat units, and the logistics team could safely begin collecting supplies.
Food, medicine, fuel; seeds, hoes, plastic buckets—even door panels and wire fencing were gathered up to be taken back.
“Team leader, should we just leave this torn burlap sack behind?”
Zheng Yihe shook the fertilizer sack in his hand.
“It’s already ripped.”
The team leader shook his head.
“Take it back. We don’t have anywhere to build factories right now. Even something this cheap can still be useful once we bring it back.”
When the Blue Sea civilization fled into the Safe City, they had brought a vast amount of supplies with them—but when it came to resources and energy, the more they had, the better.
As he spoke, the team leader gestured for several people to send the collected books and illustrated materials to the expert group.
The experts would use them to analyze the civilization of this world—their writing system, language, and culture—and determine what had happened to turn them into this cursed state.
Research into their biological structure, however, did not fall under those experts’ responsibility.
The white-robed bishops sent by the temple had already begun dissecting zombie corpses.
The logistics team leader checked the time.
“Move faster! We’re about to head to the next search point.”
The drones had already relayed information from farther ahead.
There was more than just a single village in this region.
The god had given them twenty-four hours.
The people of Blue Sea had to use those twenty-four hours to push forward as far as possible, carving out a safe zone centered around the temple.
—On this day, gunfire and explosions repeatedly echoed through the once-silent mountain forests.
At the same time, large numbers of engineering troops left the city.
After securing the surrounding area, they began rapidly cutting down trees and building roads.
The roads weren’t neat, but they were good enough for infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers, assault vehicles, and military transport trucks to pass through.
The combat units had already advanced to the third village when, just as they were preparing to push farther ahead, an unexpected situation occurred.
“Report! Thermal imaging has detected a human-shaped heat signature inside a cellar!”
Zombies didn’t produce heat.
That meant a local person was still alive.
For the Blue Sea civilization, this was a shocking discovery.
They had assumed all the locals had been cursed and transformed into monsters.
Cheng Qisheng, however, wasn’t surprised.
Coriander had already said that people from the previous world had been recruited as residents, so it was perfectly normal for there to still be living locals in this zombie world.
It was only because her Safe City had appeared in a remote mountain region with just five villages nearby.
Otherwise, they probably would have found even more survivors.
The supreme commander of the Blue Sea advance force quickly made a decision: the combat units would continue with the original assault plan while remaining alert and simultaneously locating the detected survivor.
They lured the zombies, dropped explosives, and cleared the houses one by one.
The third village was soon temporarily designated a “green safe zone.”
Next, everyone rechecked their protective suits, put on their highest-grade gas masks, prepared explosives at their sides, and ordered the rest of the team to fall back to a safe distance.
A twelve-person combat squad cautiously approached an outdoor cellar.
It looked like an ordinary rural cellar, the kind used to store grain and vegetables.
One soldier used a hooked tool to pry open the cellar lid.
“Come out!!”
Every gun barrel was aimed at the cellar entrance.
Although thermal imaging had detected a human heat signature, no one knew whether whatever was inside was truly a living person capable of communication.
What if the zombies had evolved—
What if they had developed mutated variants capable of producing body heat?
There was no movement inside the cellar, but faint, rapid breathing could be heard.
—It sounded more like a mutated zombie.
Two combat personnel received orders and cautiously stepped forward, shining their flashlights inside.
It was a human little girl, around seven or eight years old, covering her mouth as she cried silently, her face filled with terror as she stared up at them.