“You’ve been following me?” Fang Qi looked at the group standing barely a dozen meters away from her, a layer of coldness gathering in her eyes.
The bright moonlight fell upon her face, which had turned deathly pale from the sudden loss of blood. Her expression was so calm that not a trace of excess emotion could be seen.
In the past, she rarely said such obvious nonsense. In fact, among the group, she had always spoken the least and had consistently carried a sense of estrangement that made her seem out of place with everyone else. But now, she had said it.
As she spoke, Fang Qi’s eyes remained fixed on the team leader, Zhao Siyuan, while the corners of her eyes swept in all directions, desperately searching for an opening through which she could break out.
However, Zhao Siyuan and the others had clearly come prepared. Zhao Siyuan, who was also a Level 2 ability user like Fang Qi, blocked her from the front to prevent her from suddenly attacking. Shen Yucheng, a Level 1 ability user, blocked her left side, which led to the footpath toward the visitor center of the Yanhu Lake Scenic Area. On her right stood Su Zhihai and Chen Mi.
Behind Fang Qi was a field of reeds that had grown luxuriantly after the natural disaster.
These former teammates had completely sealed off every direction through which Fang Qi might escape.
Chen Mi held a light and handy crowbar, while Su Zhihai carried a long-handled climbing pickaxe. Fang Qi had given both of these to them earlier. She was a mountain climbing enthusiast, and when the zombie tide erupted, these pieces of equipment had still been in her backpack.
Su Zhihai had completely lost his usual liveliness. Not only did he remain silent, but his eyes wandered restlessly, and even the hand holding the climbing pickaxe trembled slightly.
Chen Mi glanced at him, her tone carrying a hint of mocking amusement, as though she had seen through him.
“Brother Zhao already said it. After killing Fang Qi, we’ll split her supplies and the crystal cores she’s hidden. Neither of us has abilities, and we still need to absorb more crystal cores to see if we can awaken. Since you didn’t object when we came here, stop pretending now. Besides, even if we don’t kill her, she’ll become a zombie anyway. By then, she’ll be much harder to kill.”
They already had great difficulty dealing with E-rank Crawlers. If a Level 2 ability user like Fang Qi turned into a zombie, her strength probably would not be any weaker than that of a Crawler.
Chen Mi’s words pierced directly through Su Zhihai’s thoughts. His face flushed red, and he did not even dare look in Fang Qi’s direction, afraid of meeting her eyes.
In this world, relying on others was worse than relying on oneself. Although only a minority of people in the camp had abilities, and the ability users did not outwardly treat ordinary people without abilities differently…
Everyone knew that when true danger came, ordinary people like them would be the first to be sacrificed.
Obtaining more crystal cores and praying for a chance to awaken an ability, nothing was more important than that.
Fang Qi definitely had quite a few crystal cores on her.
“Chen Mi, I never expected you to hate me this much,” Fang Qi said as she looked at her.
Among the five members of the team, Fang Qi and Chen Mi were the only women. In the beginning, Chen Mi had been just like Su Zhihai and had affectionately called Fang Qi “Sister.”
However, her hostility toward Fang Qi had not appeared out of nowhere.
It all began a few days earlier, when their team had gone to a remote underground shopping mall.
Before entering, everyone’s objective had been clear: to gather food, water, and fuel. But once inside, Chen Mi had noticed several clothing stores and could not resist lingering there. She wanted to bring more pretty and warm clothes back to the camp.
Who could have expected that this delay would attract a large horde of zombies to the entrance?
Among them were even two E-rank Crawlers, whose combat strength was terrifying.
Although the team had eventually managed to break through the encirclement, they had been forced to leave behind some of the supplies they had found, and Su Zhihai had nearly been bitten by a Crawler.
Fang Qi had been furious and had inevitably scolded Chen Mi.
From that day on, Chen Mi had found everything about Fang Qi irritating.
Chen Mi smiled sweetly and replied without the slightest concern, “Yes, Sister Qi.”
Fang Qi lowered her head slightly and took out a paper bundle wrapped in several napkins from the compartment of the backpack hanging in front of her. The bundle was bulging and had considerable weight in her hand. One could vaguely tell that it contained objects resembling stones.
“The crystal cores you want are here.”
After seeing the paper bundle, Zhao Siyuan and Shen Yucheng’s breathing immediately became hurried.
They had seen this paper bundle before. It was indeed what Fang Qi usually used to store crystal cores.
They had even privately remarked that Fang Qi was far too careless. Such precious crystal cores were simply wrapped in a few pieces of paper, and she was not afraid that someone would mistake them for trash and throw them away.
More than a month had passed since the apocalypse arrived, and the uses of crystal cores had long been verified through various methods.
They were the source of the zombies’ strange powers, and also the only thing in a zombie’s body that did not carry the zombie virus.
On the lowest-level Walking Corpses, crystal cores were only about the size of a little fingernail and were colored like the most ordinary grains of sand on the ground. As one went up to E-rank Crawlers or even D-rank Intelligent Types, their crystal cores would grow larger, approximately the size of a thumbnail, and their colors would also become lighter.
The upgrading and recovery of an ability user’s powers both required the assistance of crystal cores.
More importantly, crystal cores also had effects on ordinary people. Someone had discovered that grinding crystal cores into powder and feeding them to ordinary people would greatly increase their chances of awakening abilities.
Although abilities awakened through this method were often ordinary in type and sometimes even useless, they were still better than having none at all.
The reason ordinary people like Chen Mi and Su Zhihai worked so hard to venture outside was also to fight for such an opportunity.
In short, crystal cores were beneficial to both ability users and ordinary people.
All four pairs of eyes looked at the bundle in Fang Qi’s hand. A paper bundle this full seemed capable of holding at least forty or fifty crystal cores. That meant each person could receive at least around ten.
Ten zombie crystal cores meant taking the risk of killing ten zombies. Moreover, there might even be crystal cores from E-rank Crawlers inside those paper bundles. But now they could obtain them simply by capturing Fang Qi.
Zhao Siyuan slowly spoke. “Fang Qi, we don’t want things to end up like this either. But we’re all friends, and we want to send you off one last time. We mean no harm.”
“Zhao Siyuan. Actually, we still have something in common.” Fang Qi suddenly said.
Zhao Siyuan narrowed his eyes. “What?”
“We both want the other’s life.” Fang Qi lowered her head, her voice very soft.
So soft that only Li Qiu, who was hidden in the reeds with her, could hear it.
Li Qiu was slowly chewing the “huge bargain” of meat she had picked up. The corners of her eyes curved upward, revealing her joy at finally having something to eat.
She did not like to chew her food slowly, but this meal had come too hard, and it was even more delicious than anything she had eaten before. Li Qiu wished she could chew it a hundred times to savor every bite. But at a moment like this, she could not chew too loudly. Otherwise, if the people outside discovered her, they would definitely unite against a common enemy and take care of her miserable life first.
Just as the piece of meat in her mouth was about to be chewed into paste, Li Qiu’s eyes suddenly widened.
She saw Fang Qi casually throw the paper bundle into the nearby lake, then cross the distance in a few strides and arrive beside Zhao Siyuan. Fang Qi’s uninjured right hand clenched into a fist as she became entangled in combat with him.
“What are you all standing there for?!” Zhao Siyuan shouted distractedly while dismantling Fang Qi’s desperate attacks.
Who would have thought that the people who had always obeyed him would all run toward the lakeshore?
Without even taking off their jackets, Shen Yucheng and Chen Mi dove into the water, while Su Zhihai was a step slower and had not yet entered the lake.
“Su Zhihai!” Zhao Siyuan hurriedly shouted. At this moment, one more helper was one more advantage. He had never expected Fang Qi, who had already been infected with the zombie virus, to still be this energetic.
His ability was “Copper Skin and Iron Bones.” His body’s toughness was five times that of an ordinary person, making him the perfect shield. But now this shield had encountered a monster like Fang Qi, who specialized in explosive strength, and it was as though he had met his natural enemy. Fang Qi concentrated all her strength into her right fist, and every blow she landed made his internal organs ache violently.
So even if Su Zhihai had no abilities, coming over to act as a shield and help restrain Fang Qi would still be useful.
Fortunately, Su Zhihai did not disappoint Zhao Siyuan. He actually turned around.
Zhao Siyuan excitedly revealed a smile and shouted toward him, “Zhihai, I didn’t misjudge you. Once we kill Fang Qi, I’ll help you…”
Yet the climbing pickaxe in Su Zhihai’s hand was aimed directly at him.
Zhao Siyuan felt the blood rushing to his head and could not understand. “Have you gone insane?! I’m human, she’s a zombie, and you’re helping her?”
Not only Zhao Siyuan, but even Fang Qi, who had nearly exhausted her abilities, was stunned. She looked suspiciously at Su Zhihai, thinking this was another scheme the others had planned together.
But Su Zhihai’s climbing pickaxe directly smashed toward Zhao Siyuan’s most vulnerable areas, his neck and the back of his head. After surviving together for more than a week, he knew that Zhao Siyuan’s Copper Skin and Iron Bones only referred to the torso of his body. His head was still as fragile as an ordinary person’s.
Caught in a pincer attack from both Su Zhihai and Fang Qi, Zhao Siyuan truly failed to avoid the blow and had his head smashed open by the climbing pickaxe.
Blood flowed down from his head, running over his forehead and across his triangular eyes. Zhao Siyuan’s face was almost as dark as the night sky itself.
This strike completely enraged Zhao Siyuan, but what awaited him was an even fiercer combined assault from the two of them.
In the lake, Shen Yucheng had already dived underwater, leaving only Chen Mi floating on the surface.
Chen Mi turned around and noticed what was happening, but she seemed hesitant and had no intention of going ashore to help. What she wanted more were the crystal cores Fang Qi had thrown into the lake.
She believed that Zhao Siyuan could not possibly lose to a dying Fang Qi and a powerless Su Zhihai, so she did not alert Shen Yucheng beneath the water.
It was precisely because Chen Mi had so much confidence in Zhao Siyuan that by the time she realized the fighting on the shore had gradually fallen silent, it was already too late.
When Zhao Siyuan fell, Fang Qi’s right hand had already become a bloody mess.
Of course, half of the blood on it belonged to her, and the other half belonged to Zhao Siyuan.
Su Zhihai stood to the side with a pale face. Zhao Siyuan’s blood also stained his climbing pickaxe. Unlike Fang Qi, however, he had not intended to kill Zhao Siyuan at first. He had only wanted to give Fang Qi a chance to escape.
He was just about to tell Fang Qi to run when Fang Qi spoke first.
“You should leave.”
Fang Qi had already exhausted her ability. It would take at least until tomorrow morning to recover, but she knew she probably would not live to see tomorrow morning.
The dizziness grew stronger and stronger. Originally she had only been thirsty and wanted water, but now she had developed a desire for Zhao Siyuan’s blood.
“Sister Qi, you go. I’ll hold them back for you.” Su Zhihai panted. He saw that Chen Mi and Shen Yucheng were already swimming toward the shore.
Watching from the reeds, even Li Qiu grew anxious for the two of them. She thought, with all this time spent talking, couldn’t you two just run together?
“Take this. If you don’t leave now, then after I become a zombie, you’ll be the first one I eat.” Fang Qi’s tone was cold, but what she handed to Su Zhihai were the real crystal cores she had collected.
The paper bundle she had thrown into the lake earlier had contained nothing but some broken stones she had casually picked up from the lakeside embankment. She had not expected this group to truly fall for it.
Run already!!! Li Qiu, the zombie outsider, shouted in her heart, afraid that Su Zhihai would insist on saying a few touching words first.
But Su Zhihai was only stunned for an instant. After nodding at Fang Qi, he immediately turned around and ran.
Seeing Su Zhihai leave, Fang Qi collapsed weakly beside Zhao Siyuan’s corpse. She looked coldly at the dead man whose eyes remained open, then shifted her gaze toward Shen Yucheng and Chen Mi, who had already come ashore.
Her pupils had already been dyed a layer of grayish white, and the veins on her neck bulged one by one. The remaining rationality in her mind told her that she needed to deal with these two people as quickly as possible.
Squatting in the reeds, Li Qiu thought, Overtime has begun. She really wanted to know when they would finish fighting so she could go out and enjoy her buffet.
But at that moment, a growl approached from far away.
Li Qiu parted a bit of the reeds and took a look. The suit on that zombie looked awfully familiar. But why was he crawling on all fours?